[[quoteright:350:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/star_trek_online_-_about_page_5617.jpg]]An MMO developed by Cryptic, makers of ''VideoGame/CityOfHeroes'' and ''VideoGame/ChampionsOnline'', set in the original ''Franchise/StarTrek'' universe in the year 2409, thirty years after the last appearance of the [[Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration Next Generation]] crew in film, and 22 after Romulus was destroyed in the prime timeline as per ''[[Film/StarTrek Star Trek XI]]''. The game was originally being developed by Perpetual, but was auctioned off as the studio was facing severe financial troubles at the time, and actually had to lay off nearly half of the development staff.

The Borg are back, deadlier than ever before, and the galaxy is once more on the edge of war. TheFederation and the [[TheEmpire Klingon Empire]] are at each other's throats again, and the tattered remains of the Romulan Star Empire post "Countdown" may be scattered, but they remain a credible military threat to both, and to the fledgling Romulan Republic. That's only compounded with a newly democratic Cardassia facing a civil war against [[TheRemnant True Way rebels]] helped by Dominion renegades, and the Undine (formerly Species 8472) infiltrating everyone.

In other words, the 25th century ''Franchise/StarTrek'' universe has become a CrapsackWorld ([[CrapsackOnlyByComparison relatively speaking]]), and it's up to the player(s) to find a way to make it right.

The game combines space travel with on-foot segments and a healthy dose of combat in both. A proprietary engine was created to randomize missions, star systems, and planetary surfaces, in order to provide new and different experiences every time a player engages in a mission or quest.

And, of course, being a Cryptic game, CharacterCustomization is suitably bonkers and may in fact eclipse every other thing they've done. You have an absolutely astounding number of ways to customize your captain; not only has almost every facial feature from the TV series been included, but Cryptic has included all kinds of inventions of their own. And then they allow you to apply the same level of customization ''to your entire bridge crew''. And '''then''' you get to customize the hull of your ship, and '''''[[SerialEscalation then]]''''' you get to customize your bridge with further interior customization and... well, you get the idea. Oh, and you can create a new custom species for your captain.

The general consensus is that the game is essentially a mix of ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'' '''[-[[RecycledInSpace IN SPACE! ]]-]''' combined with ''VideoGame/StarTrekStarfleetCommand''... and this isn't necessarily that bad a thing at all. Especially with "Featured Episodes", small content updates centered around a fairly lengthy and involved mission, the advent of a pretty good branching dialogue tree on top of the combat, and most recently very solid "themed" patch updates, the game has found a fairly solid set of legs and and a strong following after an admittedly rocky start, and is now Cryptic's best-selling, most profitable product.

When the game started, there were only two playable factions: the Federation and the Klingon Empire. After three years of rumors of more factions being added, the ''Legacy of Romulus'' expansion adds Romulans and Remans as playable races, along with iconic ships like the Bird of Prey and the D'deridex Warbird. Additionally, there's been [[http://www.digibytes.me/2013/02/q-a-danstahl/ discussion]] from the devs of a possible future Cardassian faction, but no official confirmation that it's going to happen just yet.

On August 2, 2014, STO's second expansion, ''Delta Rising'', was announced with a release date set for October 2014, advancing the timeline to 2410, adding the first level cap increase in years (to 60 Fleet Admiral/Dahar Master), and returning the players to the Delta Quadrant to explore what happened after ''Voyager'' left the area.

The game went [[AllegedlyFreeGame Free-To-Play]] on January 17, 2012, with the standard Subscription option containing boosts such as more wallet space, the ability to create content in the Foundry, a stipend of Zen (their Store Points), and so on, so lifetimers don't have to feel cheated at the game going free. In addition, all players can earn dilithium from end game content to trade in for Zen, allowing players who can't afford to spend real money on the game the opportunity to grind their way towards the store items they want.

Another unique feature of the game is the Foundry, an in-client LevelEditor toolset for players to create their own missions that can then be played from a storefront in the main game. As with anything else SturgeonsLaw applies, but the game has an established core of dedicated Foundry authors that gather on the forums and on [[http://starbaseugc.com/ Starbase UGC.com]] and produce missions that are often rated as being [[BetterThanCanon better than the official outings]]. A [[NeedsWikiMagicLove sparsely populated]] list of work pages for some Foundry missions can be found at Recap.StarTrekOnline. Cryptic also ported the editor to ''STO's'' sister game ''VideoGame/{{Neverwinter}}''.

The game is considered part of the ''Franchise/StarTrekExpandedUniverse'', but is an AlternateContinuity to the [[Franchise/StarTrekNovelVerse Novel Verse]] (with the big point of diversion being that ''[[Literature/StarTrekDestiny Star Trek Destiny]]'' just flat-out does not happen).

----!!This game provides examples of:

[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder:Tropes A-C]]

* TwoDSpace: While there are three dimensions, the up-down is severely restricted in scope and way smaller than the others. There also is a defined "up" in space, meaning instead of moving freely in all three, you may only move two dimensional with a little height difference. This does not have to be all bad though, since it eases orientation for players.** The main problem is that the ships are limited in how much they can pitch up or down (to about 75 degrees relative to the plane of the ecliptic) and are unable to execute any kind of rolling maneuvers other than banking during turns. This is likely to prevent players from getting horribly confused and turned around, but it also does make "vertical" attacks difficult to pull off; this unfortunately makes [[LightningBruiser escorts]], with their narrower firing arcs, a bit harder to use than they probably should be.* AbnormalAmmo: The winter events held by Q from 2012 onward have introduced a whole line of ground weapons that use ''snow'' as ammunition for the [[SnowballFight snowball fights]] held therein.* AbortedArc: Cryptic has a bad habit of leaving plot threads to just dangle unresolved.** The Federation-Klingon War is almost completely forgotten after the "Klingon War" and "Warzone" arcs and every time the two sides meet after that save one[[labelnote:*]]"The Tribble with Klingons" has the Fed player duking it out with Ja'rod over a tribble sanctuary.[[/labelnote]] they're engaged in TeethClenchedTeamwork. Cryptic finally resolved it in "Surface Tension", with mixed results.[[labelnote:*]]Some players were irritated about the mission glossing over the Klingons' war crimes committed in the name of expansionism and blaming the whole thing on the Undine.[[/labelnote]]** The Gorn rebellions mentioned in the background literature barely receive lip service in-game.** The Romulan Star Empire remnant under Sela is forgotten completely after "Cutting the Cord". Later unaborted in ''Delta Rising'', although through WordOfGod exposition. [[spoiler:During the in-fighting after Sela's kidnapping and the Tal Shiar's defeat on New Romulus, the RSE basically lost all political clout and was no longer recognized by any of the other powers of the Quadrant as more and more of their forces defected to the Republic. As of 2410, the Treaty of Algeron has been dissolved (ending Starfleet's ban on Cloaking Technology) and what remains of the Star Empire is a handful of hold out colonies. In ''Delta Rising'' a number of Romulan Intelligence Officers are Tal Shiar defectors who saw the writing on the wall and said ScrewThisImOuttaHere.]][[invoked]]** The True Way really get no resolution in the Cardassian arc (yes, you captured two of their leaders, but come on, they're a terrorist organization).** On the KDF end of things, the Fek'Ihri arc ends with a SequelHook ({{technobabble}} to the effect that they may not have been genuine demons from hell) that is left to dangle.* AbusivePrecursors: [[spoiler: Remember how Picard thought that the Iconians had a bad rep due to their frightening teleportation technology? Thanks to season 7 and the revelations about the Dewans, ''he was wrong. [[ManipulativeBastard Very.]] [[DarkIsEvil Very.]] '''[[DespotismJustifiesTheMeans Wrong.]]''''']]* AceCustom: Your spaceship. Payload, paintjob, engines, shields, the works. The Federation ships have the largest collection of them, though.* ActuallyFourMooks: Sensor contacts, and selections, overlap at long range. Though you can probably see visually there's more than one ship, or that if there was a single ship the size of that selection box you ought to be able to see it!* AdamSmithHatesYourGuts:** I have to spend twenty credits to get a drink out of the replicator? What, did my crew bring a bag lunch and never use them? For that matter, I have to pay Starfleet to have better guns mounted on my ship?** Trade goods vary in price at different locations, but always sell for a price slightly lower than the cheapest price you can buy them for, so you can't make trade runs across the galaxy with a full load of them, only buy them for missions and research.** Also averted in two ways. 1: You don't have to pay a penny to get the stock weapons, shields, etc that come standard on your ship (like the phasers and photon torpedoes that the Enterprise always had; we never saw them trade up for better weapons!). 2: You will get so many loot drops throughout the game that you can sell, so that you will eventually be rolling in Energy Credits (the ingame currency) anyway and can afford the awesome upgrades.** Reinforced by the Reputation System where you can earn powerful upgrades to your ship and character, but you have to grind in-game resources for weeks just to ''unlock'' them and then you have to pay one of the ingame currencies (that takes FOREVER to grind but you can conveniently buy for real cash) in order to buy most of the items once they have been unlocked.* AirGuitar: [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wMEcxqX2ws One of the emotes.]] * AlienNonInterferenceClause: The Prime Directive is still in full effect here, both the normal and the Temporal variant.* AllegedlyFreeGame: Averted. See BribingYourWayToVictory below. You can get the best ships and things in the game without ever having to spend a penny. You just have to spend more time to earn it.* AllThereInTheManual: The game's backstory is written out in the "Path to 2409" item device, which tells what happened between the events of ''Film/StarTrek'' and the game. More information is also written in ''Star Trek Magazine'' such as [[spoiler:that Data and the ''Enterprise''-E returned to Earth, the E decommissioned and Data retiring to become a teacher.]]* AllYourPowersCombined: There are numerous devices, both ground and space, that grants you amazing bonuses when they are connected together on one person. A handful, such as those on the Odyssey-class, Bortasqu'-class and Scimitar-class, can only be used on that certain class, but many others can be used with any.* AlphaStrike: This is pretty much the escort's specialty; blitzing a target with massed torpedo and cannon fire to (hopefully) decimate the target before it has a chance to retaliate.* AlternateContinuity:** ''Averted'', in fact; this is the original Star Trek universe, the one in which ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'', ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'', ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' et al. happened. Vulcan is fine, while Romulus is a shattered husk of the world it once was. [[spoiler:This is evidently going to mean Very Bad Things for just about everyone in the Alpha Quadrant, since the Romulans are ''all'' tattooed [[Series/BattlestarGalacticaReimagined NewBSG-esque]] aggressive space gypsies now.]]** Played straight in its relation to the Franchise/StarTrekNovelverse. The backstory borrows some details and plots from the novelverse[[labelnote:e.g.]]Riker and Troi had kids, Picard and Crusher married and had kids, the Romulans had a civil war in the 2380s, Ezri Dax commanded the USS ''Aventine'', and Data's still alive and took over as captain of the ''Ent''-E.[[/labelnote]], but discards others.[[labelnote:e.g.]]The original Deep Space 9 still guards the wormhole, the two Romulan factions merged back together just in time for [[Film/StarTrek Hobus]], nobody's ever heard of the Typhon Pact, and the Borg stayed away from the Alpha Quadrant until 2409.[[/labelnote]]** Played with even further in the TieInNovel ''Literature/TheNeedsOfTheMany'', where a former Temporal Investigations agent remembers events from the game, the Franchise/StarTrekNovelVerse, and the [[Film/StarTrek J.J. Abrams movie]], suggesting that any and all continuities can intersect whenever the heck they feel like it.* AlwaysABiggerFish: The Iconians are fond of this one. The second time they show up, they're wiping out the two Borg Cubes coming after you. The third time, just as you're in a fight for your life with [[spoiler: Empress Sela]], an Iconian ship [[spoiler: shows up, snags her ship and sucks her through a Gateway.]]** It should say something that after everything we went through with the Dominion in Deep Space Nine that for the Dominion's official policy revealed by Eraun in an optional conversation is "Take what you want Mr. Iconian Sir." ''What the hell are the Iconians doing that made the '''DOMINION''' curl up and act like a nerd being picked on by the captain of the football team!?''* AmazingTechnicolorPopulation: Given the game's practically infinite character customization options, it's not uncommon to see player-characters with practically any skin and hair color you can possibly imagine, from the dull and mundane to shades that will burn your eyes from clear across the room.* {{Ambadassador}}: S'taass, the Gorn ambassador for the Klingon Empire during the "Second Wave" mission. [[spoiler:When [=DS9=] is boarded by the Dominion his first reaction is to leap over the table and tear a Jem'Hadar apart with his claws! His second reaction is taking up the hobby of running up to Jem'Hadar and pummeling them to death with his bare hands and biting their throats out!]]** The Player Characters can become this as well, thanks to a Diplomacy XP system capped by gaining the official status and title of Ambassador, [[AndYourRewardIsClothes complete with spiffy Dress Uniform]].** Worf in Sphere of Influence.* AnAdventurerIsYou: Initially played straight with the three main classes of ships: Escorts are best at dealing a lot of damage fast, cruisers are best at soaking up punishment, science vessels are best at healing, buffing and debuffing. The lines start to blur a little at higher levels and with some C-store ships like the ''Nebula'' and ''Excelsior'', and there's definitely wiggle room, but by and large each class has its strengths along the lines of the MMO Holy Trinity.** Blurs earlier than that. The cruiser, with its high hull rating can be a tank, but with engineering crew can also heal itself and a friendly's shields, making it a buffer too. The science vessel, with its strong shields can be a magic tank, and debuffer with good science personnel. The tactical vessel is a good combo of the blade-master and backstabber with good tactical officers, although an escort with the right skills and load-out is just as much capable of taking damage and dishing it out as well. The real difference between vessel types is not determined by their base stats, but the number of bridge crew and console slots for a particular field and ''their'' abilities, which like almost everything else, can be infinitely customized.** Further blurred by your captain's career. Since captains can fly any of the ship their abilities and traits are added on top of the ships abilities shifting them towards more damage (Tactical Captains), more survivability (Engineer captains) or more debuffing (Science captains).* AncientAstronauts: [[spoiler: At the end of the Breen arc, a planet is found with thousands of living Preservers in stasis, with many choosing to awaken and explore the Galaxy created by the various species in the Trek verse whose worlds they seeded billions of years ago.]]* AndIMustScream: Getting assimilated by the Borg in ground missions will result in a temporary version of this, as the player will no longer be in control of their character, who will proceed to engage any nearby allies just like another drone until they're finally put out of their misery.** Gaius Selan gets hit with this in "Uneasy Allies", where Sela reprograms his Borg implants and forces him to help her escape Republic captivity. It's made clear that he was conscious the whole time, and unable to control his actions at all.* AndYourRewardIsClothes: The Vice Admiral overcoat and Ambassador dress uniform awarded to Federation players for reaching those ranks.* AntiAir: During the mission 'Cutting the Cord', the player can use their personal weapons to shoot down a Romulan Scorpion fighter craft.** Also the case in 'Sphere of Influence', 'A Step Between Stars', and the ground portion of the Solanae Dyson Sphere where the player shoots down airborne swarmer drones.* AntiGrinding: You can kill enemies again and again to level up, but you earn a lot more experience points doing the missions assigned to you.** The Dyson Joint Command reputation system was an attempt at this compared to the other rep systems; it worked so well that the devs decided to overhaul the Romulan, Omega, and Nukara rep systems to match it in Season 9.* ApocalypticLog: Several of the random exploration missions on dead worlds or empty stations. Examples include [[AxCrazy mind control experiments]] GoneHorriblyWrong, [[HyperspaceIsAScaryPlace teleportation experiments]] GoneHorriblyWrong, and other such things [[OverlyLongGag Gone Horribly Wrong.]]* ArbitraryMaximumRange: In space combat, 10 kilometers. Some ships can cross that distance in a handful of seconds. Some turret satellites and the fleet starbase in the PVE missions involving it can engage targets slightly beyond this range however.* ArbitraryMinimumRange: The Starfleet ''Avenger''-class battlecruiser's unique console, the Variable Auto-Targeting Armament, cannot be fired if the ''Avenger'' is within 2 kilometers of its target. Same with the Romulan Hyper-Plasma Torpedo available through the reputation system. In both cases there's a good reason: they're AreaOfEffect weapons, and in the case of VATA, the further from your target you fire it, the more [[RecursiveAmmo submunitions]] it will have time to fire.* ArcNumber: 47 has always been an in-joke in Trek productions. STO turns it into this with a subtle and easily missed WhamLine in the Romulan Faction mission "Sleepers." [[spoiler: 47 is the Borg Designation for the Iconians]]. There's also the main deck on Earth Spacedock (deck 47), the Borg's Unimatrix 0047 command ships, and the default registry for the Federation's NPC Galaxy-X dreadnought is NCC-170147.* ArchaicWeaponForAnAdvancedAge:** The game continues the Klingon trend of charging right in with a bat'leth instead of staying back and shooting, and adds a couple lesser-known types of edged weapons (Vulcan lirpa and Tsunkatse falchions). Given a justification this time: basically everyone has a personal deflector shield that works fine against ranged weapons, but 80% of melee damage, whether from a sword, PistolWhipping, or Kirk-fu, goes straight through to the target's HP. This is especially useful against the Borg, who will adapt over time to energy weapons and force you to re-frequence, but against certain types of drones also leaves you open to a OneHitKill by assimilation.** Despite having originally been built 130-odd years ago by the time of the game, the ''Excelsior''-class is considered one of the top four DPS cruisers on the Starfleet side. (At the bottom of the top four, granted, but it still beats out the [[TierInducedScrappy too-much-tank-not-enough-DPS]] [[invoked]] ''Galaxy''-class.)** In the shuttle {{PVP}} added in the Season 8.5 update, the [[Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries TOS]]-era Type F shuttle is considered one of the top competitors, regularly beating players flying ''Peregrine''-class attack fighters or runabouts from ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine''. This is roughly the equivalent of a UsefulNotes/WorldWarI biplane shooting down an F-22.** Justified with the Xindi lockbox ships added in Season 9.5. Though they look physically identical to the ships from ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'' 250 years earlier, [[AllThereInTheManual Cryptic's blog]] says that the Xindi continually updated them to keep up with newer classes. No such justification is given for the equally old ''T'varo''-class light warbird, whose T5 version is surprisingly deadly for a 250-year-old design.** A Kirk-era Type 2 Phaser packs more of a punch than a standard 25th Century Type 2 Phaser (and ''scales'' with the player's level), even though the 25th Century phaser is ''supposed'' to be ''two centuries'' more advanced.%%*** Justified in FlavorText where it is explained that the older phaser models were more crude and dangerous, in return for a higher damage output. The focus seems to have shifted away from damage to stunning. Sadly we don't get to see the latter in gameplay. StarSword's note: Commenting out justifying edit while I fact-check it; will combine into preceding line if true.* ArmCannon: A standard feature for tactical and higher Borg drones, as well as some classes of Undine troops. Players can also acquire one from the Species 8472 reputation system.* ArtificialAtmosphericActions: -->'''Starfleet NPC:''' [[MemeticBadass Is that (Rank and Player Name), captain of the (Ship Name)?]]** If a custom title is used, that replaces the Rank when people speak to you. This can lead to some strange results, however.-->'''Starfleet NPC:''' Good day, Moist (Player Name).* ArtificialStupidity: The Borg seem to ignore any mini-ships you send at them, like the Scorpion Fighters. All you have to do is run outside of combat range while they slowly but surely deal hull damage and eventually destroy them.* ArtEvolution: Many characters have been modified over the years. Of major note is Empress Sela and Ambassador Worf, both of whom were modified to resemble the actual characters once their actors (Denise Crosby and Michael Dorn, respectively) gave their permission to use their likenesses.* ArtisticLicenseAstronomy:** You'll be hard pressed to find any area of space outside of Earth that isn't engulfed by millions of miles of stellar gasses, dusts, and nebulae painting the backdrop, and AsteroidThicket is in full effect here. Later maps are much better about this. Mainly because a lot of people complained. A good example is the revamped ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' exterior which ditched the nebula for black space, with a hint of the purple denorios belt that was sometimes seen in the series and a lens flare sun representing the Bajoran star.** The name of the "close flyby of the DysonSphere's sun" map in "A Step Between Stars" is "Brown Dwarf". A [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_dwarf brown dwarf]] is a star that failed to ignite ''at all''.** Distances in sector space are way off. For example, Wolf 359 is a real star, located 7.8 light-years from Sol. In-game it's more like three, which is closer than Proxima Centauri should be.* AsLongAsItSoundsForeign: With a ConLang, no less. The game borrowed bits of the worldbuilding done by Creator/DianeDuane for her ''Literature/{{Rihannsu}}'' novel series for the Romulan Republic in the ''Legacy of Romulus'' expansion. Unfortunately, [[http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=884961 Rihan language geeks have noted]] that "''Mol'Rihan''", the in-game Romulan translation of "New Romulus", is grammatically incorrect: they just slapped "mol'" ("new", but it's supposed to be a ''suffix'') onto ch'Rihan (Romulus in Romulan, literally "of the Declared"). Among the more more accurate translations would be "''ch'Rihan'mol''".* AscendedFanon: [[invoked]] More accurately, Ascended Licensed-But-Non-Canon Material. The game follows the movie and television canon to the letter. Cryptic does, however, have the option of incorporating "soft canon" like the novels however they please, so they've gone ahead and thrown in a few things like the ''Luna''-class from ''Literature/StarTrekTitan'' and [[StarTrekNewFrontier Captain Mackenzie Calhoun]], and stated that the ''Titan'' novels will be part of the game's backstory as Riker's first command (except for the ''Destiny'' series where [[spoiler:the Borg Collective gets finally destroyed]]). There isn't yet a comprehensive list of what has or hasn't been put in from soft canon, however.** The ''Vesta''-class starships added in Season 7 are a direct reference to the ''Destiny'' novels.*** Ezri Dax's command of the U.S.S. ''Aventine'' is also mentioned by Commander Matthias in the 2014 revamp of "First Contact Day".** The harness-like designs and special combat functions of many of the away team "kits" (not to mention the [[{{BFG}} big screwoff disruptor-miniguns]] and the like) suggest that ''VideoGame/StarTrekEliteForce'' may well be continuity with STO as well.** The mention of the StarfleetCorpsOfEngineers and of the ''U.S.S. [=DaVinci=]'' in a couple of non-story mission suggest that some elements of the S.C.E. novels may be canon now, as well.** That whole business about Andorians having four genders is almost completely taken from the books.** The ''Literature/{{Rihannsu}}'' novels, which fleshed out the Romulan culture, seem to have been incorporated completely, as well, with Romulan missions making multiple references to what was depicted therein.** Some of the ''Literature/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineRelaunch'' novels are canon, too; certainly the book about Garak (written by Andrew J Robinson no less), as the past religion of Cardassia is in the game. However, it seems the entire series hasn't been incorporated whole-cloth, as The Sisko doesn't seem to have returned yet, among other things. They may be saving ''that'' one for an in-game event.** [[Literature/StarTrekTitan Admiral]] [[Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries Leonard James]] [[StarTrekNovelVerse Akaar]] shows up in one mission during the [[spoiler: Romulan]] arc.** Elements of the epic Creator/DianeDuane [[http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Spock%27s_World novel]] ''Literature/SpocksWorld'' show up in a Diplomacy mission on Vulcan.** The Romulan farming colony on Virinat is from the StarTrekNovelVerse.* AscendedMeme:** During the two-year anniversary event, you could ask Q Junior where Captain Sulu was.[[labelnote:explanation]]MemeticMutation from the constant requests from new players how to find him, due to poor wording of the mission directions.[[/labelnote]] He would complain about [[DiscreditedMeme your use of an ancient meme]].** When the Romulan PC [[spoiler:is captured and subjected to Tal Shiar {{brainwashing}}]], they can acquire a pair of accolades ("There Are Four Lights" and "There Are Five Lights", depending on [[spoiler:whether they fully resist or fully comply with the brainwashing]]) inspired by the TwoPlusTortureMakesFive scene between Picard and Gul Madred in Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration: "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS6E10ChainOfCommand "Chain of Command, Part II]]".** During the fifth anniversary event, Q Junior would occasionally comment in a pop-up while in the Deep Space 9 space map, "Is Kurland here?"[[labelnote:explanation]]MemeticMutation from [=DS9=] CO James Kurland's voiced lines in "Boldly They Rode".[[/labelnote]]** One of the exploration accolades on Nimbus III, for climbing to the top of a particular mountain, is "Why Are You Climbing a Mountain?" in apparent reference to [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HU2ftCitvyQ this YouTube video]].* AsteroidMiners: Players can now strap on their EVA suit and mine for in-game currency on, yep, an asteroid.* AsteroidThicket: Usually as a planet's rings or a debris field. At least in the early missions, though, [[NarmCharm it's just a bunch of rocks floating in the middle of nowhere, for no reason whatsoever.]] Worse, the thickets tend to exist just around the mission area. Meaning that if you're not surrounded by asteroids you're likely far from where you should be. Less of a problem with later missions.* ATeamFiring: Dual pistols, miniguns, and assault rifles have a spray-and-pray special ability which, fittingly, has a chance to cause Expose. The primary fire is actually very accurate.** Also the case with the Cannon: Scatter Volley ability which modifies your ship's cannons and turrets to fire a huge burst in the general direction of the primary target; it's good for firing on a group of enemies, but even then not all of the shots will hit a target.** Players will occasionally have instances where they will miss their target repeatedly in space combat due either to low accuracy skill modifiers, bad luck in the game engine's random [=hit/miss=] generator, or a combination thereof. Tends to happen most often with small, fast-moving targets such as fighters & shuttles.* AttackItsWeakPoint:** {{Invoked|Trope}}, as basic offensive tactics are to batter down one shield facing with energy weapons and then finish with torpedoes to the exposed hull, though this blurs considerably in the metagame.** The battle against the Doomsday Device requires you to launch Hargh'Peng torpedoes right down its throat. By the way, [[OhCrap that's also where it shoots back from]].** Also the case with the Borg transwarp gates in the Infected & Khitomer space [=STF=]'s; the gate cannot be damaged until the nanite generators and transformers (in that order, mind you) on either side of it are destroyed.** Attacks to the sides or from behind in ground combat deal additional "flanking" damage in addition to the normal damage inflicted (applies to both players and [=NPC=]'s, so beware).** Some of the passive abilities unlocked at tier 3 of the intelligence officer specialization make attacks from the enemy's rear even more devastating, and allow for flanking damage in space combat (which originally could be done only by 'raider'-type ships like the Klingon Bird of Prey and Breen Plesh Brek) regardless of what kind of ship the player is flying.* AttackOfThe50FootWhatever: The Voth ground forces includes a massive, Tyrannosaurus-like dinosaur as one of the bosses. God help anyone foolish enough to attempt to take it on alone.** The 2012 winter event added a giant snowman as the boss for the snowman attacks that took place there (although that is possible to solo).* AttackPatternAlpha: Alpha and it's variants appear as buff skills that provide an edge in battle. Although only Alpha can be used on all types of ships, escorts are capable of patterns Beta, Delta and Omega with tactical officers that have learned them.* AttentionDeficitOohShiny: Ten of Ten, a Liberated-Borg Caitian duty officer who is obtained through a critical success from the Support B'Tran Cluster Colonization Efforts assignment.-->''"My time in the Collective honed me. I am more focused on ... hey, that light is blinking!"''** The fact that Ten of Ten is a ''[[CatGirl Caitian]]'' makes it even funnier to anyone who's ever driven a cat insane with a laser pointer.* AwesomeAnachronisticApparel: Who says you can't wear a Tux in the 25th Century? This also extends to anyone who wears the various older uniforms of Starfleet.** Played with with the introduction of ''future'' uniforms. Obviously anachronistic, presumably awesome in your eyes if you decide to use them -- and exactly the opposite of old-fashioned.** Partially averted as of late, with the standardization of the Odyssey uniform; you can still wear whatever you want, but now all crew, new officers, and {{NPC}}s will wear the same uniforms rather than some combination of the old Sierra/Antares uniforms.* AwesomeYetImpractical: Antiproton Weaponry. The strongest energy weaponry type in the game, it comes with a natural [=[CrtlD]=] tag, meaning it gives 20% extra Critical Damage. However, for the longest time, AP weaponry were only purchasable through the Dilithium store or in Fleet Stores, meaning both were prohibitively expensive[[note]]The Dilithium store sold them for about 20,000 Dil while the Advanced Type in Fleet Stores were 20,000 Fleet Marks and 8,000 Dil, but Fleet Stores had a limit on how many items were available to be purchased[[/note]] to obtain. It wasn't until the Feature Episode "Sphere of Influence" when AP weaponry became widely available, even if its modifier was [Acc]x2** Tricobalt torpedoes. They're the strongest of the Torpedo types, cause an AOE damage to those around it and can disable ships and push them. However, they have an ungodly reload time (30 seconds) compared to the other types (6-10 seconds) and can be targeted and destroyed, which is very bad for PVP. The only way to mitigate this problem is if you have [=DOFF=]s who have a chance to knock down your Torpedo's cooldown timer.** The 2x EXP bonuses the game sometimes gives out. It warps you too fast through the game and if you've just started, then you've missed out on a lot. This is especially painful with the KDF and Romulans as, unlike the Federation, they have to reach a certain ''misssion'' to obtain their new ship and by that time, they'd hit Level ''20''** Most Hybrid/Special space weaponry. With the exception of Dominion Polaron, Plasma/Disruptor, Piercing Tetryon, Caustic Plasma[[note]]All mission-based weaponry[[/note]], Protonic Polaron, Romulan Plasma, and Refracting Tetryon[[note]]All Reputation-based weaponry[[/note]], they're all Lockbox-obtainable weapons. However, the box set they come in never specifies what you're gonna get, thus it's a gamble to even check and it's very possible that you'd end up with a ground weapon instead. As well, good luck trying to get them on the Exchange, as they're usually a good 5-6 million each.** The new Upgrade System. While it's wonderful to finally push your weapons past Mk XII and even get your weapons into Epic territory, it can be quite cost prohibitive and has the major risk (if you're that kind of person who has to have the ''right'' weapon kind) of "ruining" your weapon build by giving you a modifier that you don't want.* BadassCape: One of the clothing options for veteran and Honor Guard KDF players, as well as Romulan players upon reaching the [[FourStarBadass Admiralty]] ranks.* BadassCrew: After the first story arc of the game, the player and their BridgeBunnies more than qualify for this status. And if you fill your Duty Officer ranks with Uncommon to Very Rare [=DOFFs=], your ship's crew readily qualifies as well.* BadassLongcoat: By the time you reach Level 50 (the level cap prior to Delta Rising), you are very badass indeed. And what is your reward for all this badassery? A knee-length Vice Admiral's overcoat.** With the Uniform updates of Season 9.5, the VA overcoat is outdated. But there are three special longcoats 200 day and lifetime subs gets - the Odyssey Long Jacket, the Bortasqu' Long Jacket and the Romulan Admiral's coat.** The senior Vaadwaur ground troops (Tech Officers and Overseers) rock these as well.* BadassLongRobe: The content update "Common Ground" added off duty outfits for the players to wear, including a selection of robes.** NPC [[EliteMooks Klingon Captains & Dahar Masters]] will also sport these.** Fleet embassies that have reached a certain level can unlock these for members.* BadPresent / BadFuture: Just as the episode it is a sequel to, technically ''Temporal Ambassador'' is the present from the perspective of your character, but in all other respects fits Bad Future better -- up to and including being the result of someone from the past ending up in the future.* BaitAndSwitchBoss: Inverted in [[spoiler:one of the endgame missions, when [[PhysicalGod Q]] tosses you into battle against [[OhCrap three Borg Cubes]]... and then when they're just outside your weapons range [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9Mlk0dgLlc#t=1m57s he decides to go easy on you and handwaves two of the Cubes out of existence.]]]]* BaldOfAwesome: One of the customization options for your character is to lose the hair and make like Picard or Sisko.* BaldOfEvil:** Obisek plays this early on in the Romulan storyline.** Hakeev plays it even straighter throughout the entire storyline.** Also male Orions when the player is fighting against them.* BalkanizeMe: The {{Backstory}} of how the Romulan Star Empire breaks up and unites repeatedly, [[JustForFun/SurprisinglySimilarStories strikingly resembles]] what happened to [[Franchise/StarWarsExpandedUniverse a certain other franchise's]] [[TheEmpire Empire]]. The first part is borrowed from the StarTrekNovelVerse post-''Nemesis'', where Senator Tal'aura and Commander Donatra had a falling out and Donatra led part of the military to form the Imperial Romulan State. In the game backstory, the RSE and IRS eventually merged back together ... just in time for Hobus to cut the heart out of the Empire and fragment it beyond belief. Nowadays a large chunk of what's left of the Empire is a military dictatorship under Empress Sela, with the [[StateSec Tal Shiar]] practically a state unto itself, while several breakaway colonies and the Reman Resistance have united under Proconsul D'Tan (Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration: "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS5E7Unification1 Unification]]" two-parter) to form the Romulan Republic (the player Romulan faction), with Federation and Klingon backing.* BareYourMidriff: One of the premium uniforms is the TOS Mirror Universe Terran uniform. There's also the various {{Stripperiffic}} outfits worn by Orion women in the game (both players and NPC's) that leave next to nothing to the imagination.* BayonetYa: The Klingon Honor Guard disruptor rifles have a wicked-looking blade affixed to them under the barrel. Couple this with the rifle striking melee attack, and you have a nasty surprise for anyone foolish enough to get up close with someone wielding these.* BeamSpam: Beam: Fire at Will is the most literal interpretation given that it ends up with your phasers blasting away at anything in sight, but really, any broadside from a beam-laden high-level cruiser qualifies. If we count cannons, Cannon: Scatter Volley is about as spammy as they come.* BeardOfEvil: Appropriately, this seems omnipresent in the Mirror Universe Terran Empire. At least for the men.** Also applies to most male Klingons when the player fights against them.* BeehiveBarrier:** Your away team members can set one up for you to take cover behind. And then you've got ones ''[[UpToEleven on a planetary scale.]]''** The Engineer gets one automatically around Lieutenant Commander 5 (level 15), bonus points because this uses the same graphic as the Power Armor Block ability in ''VideoGame/ChampionsOnline''.* BettingMiniGame: With the release of Season 2, Dabo is now been introduced in which you can earn Gold Pressed Latinum.* {{BFG}}: ''Many of them''. Your away team will likely be decked out with these after about three or four hours of gameplay.* {{BFS}}: The Klingon Bat'leth sword, which can be used by both playable factions. They are also carried by ''[[DemonicSpiders Klingon Swordmasters]]'', and it would be wise to take them down before they can get close enough to use it.* BewareTheNiceOnes: The Federation has gone to war. Enough said. Also ''might'' apply for the peaceful hunter-gatherer Aelasians - see the SuperweaponSurprise entry below.* BifurcatedWeapon:** The Admiral level variant of the ''Galaxy''-class [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKNsvO5HieY#t=1m25s can separate into the Saucer and battle sections]], just like in ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration''. And then there's the multi-vector attack mode ''Prometheus''-class, which can [[SerialEscalation split into three separate ships.]]** Among the Tactical, Operations, and Science variety Odyssey Class ships, the Operations can do a saucer separation, and Tactical can launch an escort from the back. Sadly, while you can use both consoles on one ship, you can't use both abilities at the same time (splitting into three sections). ** The Haakona Advanced Warbird available to the Romulan faction can split into two separate vessels. The ship's description mentions that this was developed from technology recovered from the U.S.S. ''Prometheus'' that the Romulans attempted to steal in ''Series/StarTrekVoyager''.** The playable version of the Elachi Sheshar Dreadnought can pull this off as well; detaching the lower half which then functions as a separate vessel.* BigBad: STO actually has narrative arcs throughout its main-line story content that feature major antagonists and foils for your crew.** On the 'Klingon Front', [[spoiler:"Ambassador"/General B'vat, who will do just about ''[[OmnicidalManiac anything]]'' to keep the Fed/Klink war going so that Klingons don't turn on one another.]] ** 'Spectres', the Devidian arc, has their leader, the Shrouded Phantasm, who is responsible for their nefarious plans on Drozana Station.** Colonel Hakeev of the Tal Shiar is the main antagonist of the 'Cloaked Intentions' story arc covering the struggle between the Romulans and Remans, as well as of the ''entire storyline'' for Romulan players, in which [[spoiler:it's revealed that as [[TheMole an Iconian agent]], he's the true source of basically all the evil that's befallen their civilisation]].** 'The Fek'lhri Return', in which TheLegionsOfHell invade Klingon space, turns out to be the under the orders of, surprise surprise, [[{{Satan}} Fek'lhr]]. Maybe -- the Fek'lhri actually ''invading'' Klingon space keep referring Molor's (a legendary tyrant, and another of the bosses you defeat along the way to Fek'lhr) destiny to rule over the Empire and the galaxy, and [[spoiler: sensor readings during your counter-invasion of Gre'thor imply the Fek'lhri might have been artificial proxies of some other power]]** In the 'Cardassian Struggle', the antagonists behind most[[note]]Mirror Terrans have a mini-arc of their own, and the Undine make an appearance in the Federation version of Cardassian Struggle. There's also Loriss and Kar'ukan, the enemy leaders during the final few missions, who operate entirely separate from the others due to having been shifted forward in time along with an enormous Dominion armada from the height of the Dominion War.[[/note]] of the the various goings-on in Cardassian space turn out to be [[spoiler:a BigBadDuumvirate of two rogue Dominion operatives, First Lamat'Ukan of the Jem'Hadar and Laas the Changeling, with Gul Madred, leader of the True Way serving as their front man]].** 'The 2800' are led by First Kar'ukan, a very stubborn time-displaced Jem'Hadar who hasn't heard of ([[spoiler:and isn't much interested in]]) the peace between his people and the Alpha Quadrant. Along with him is his Vorta, Loriss, [[spoiler: but he stops listening to her when she gets convinced the peace is real.]]** 'Cold War' features Thot Trel, a Breen warlord determined to rip apart the Orellius sector in search of its buried treasures.** The Borg [[spoiler:and the Undine (Species 8472)]] serve as the end-game big foes, and make brief appearances earlier in the game to set up the threat for later.** The true BigBad of the game, though, is [[spoiler:the ancient, lost civilisation of the Iconians, who once ruled the galaxy with an iron fist and feel like coming back for another go]]. They are TheManBehindTheMan for just about ''everything'', including [[spoiler:the Hobus supernova, Hakeev's atrocities in Romulan space, the mysterious goings-on in the Tau Dewa sector, the Undine invasion, and maybe even the Klingon Empire's mysterious run-in with the Fek'lhri]].* BigDamnHeroes: ** ''You'' as a player get a whole bunch of these moments. This is also the entire purpose of the Fleet Support ability, which lets you call in another Federation ship once your hull integrity drops below 50%.** You're also on the ''receiving'' end of one of these in an early mission: [[spoiler:You find out that the ambassador you've been escorting really is an Undine/8472 infiltrator, and he's beamed back to his ship... a Tethys-class dreadnought that you cannot possibly hope to fight under any circumstances. You can only hope to survive by shooting down the plasma torpedos it spews at you... and then help arrives in the form of the USS ''Kirk'', leading a flotilla of warships which open up an incredible can of whoopass on the dreadnought.]]** The [[spoiler: U.S.S. Enterprise-F]] coming to the rescue in Boldly They Rode.* BigDumbObject: The Voth Fortress Ship. [[UnnecessarilyLargeVessel 134km long]]. Easily killable [[AnticlimaxBoss by five players.]]* BigNo: Happens twice; first when the player escapes from Hakeev on Nopada Prime, then again when [[spoiler: Undine!Cooper gets "repurposed"]] at the climax of "Mindgames".* BilingualBonus: The Breen capital ships in the Orellius Sector Block (Snosk, Desna, and Istapp) are respectively named for the Swedish word for "snowshoe"[[note]]Named ''for'', note, not actually ''meaning'' snowshoe. That'd be Snoesko.[[/note]], the old Slavic word for "right hand", and the Swedish word for "icicle".* BloodKnight: B'vat, far beyond even the standards of other Klingons. He is obsessed with keeping the new Fed/Klink war going in perpetuity, because he fears that without a great enemy to fight then the Empire will turn on itself and rip itself to shreds in civil war, just to slake the Klingon thirst for warfare... [[DumbassHasAPoint just like it, uh, did happen]] in TNG and ''Klingon Academy''. He's willing to slaughter ''billions'', revive terrible weapons [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking and kidnap Miral Paris]] to make sure the Fed is willing to fight the Empire as long as possible.** He's so far gone that [[spoiler:when you meet his past self during a TimeTravel mission, he asks you to give his future self an honorable death.]]** Amusingly enough, this character (almost to a T) duplicates one from ANOTHER videogame franchise - these are exactly the motivation AND the actions of [[spoiler:Admiral Tolwyn from the ''VideoGame/WingCommander'' franchise, as shown in ''Wing Commander IV'']].* BoardingParty: Besides multiple in-story examples where you're boarding enemies or they're boarding you or friendlies, the "Boarding Party" Engineering skill allows you to launch crewmen in shuttles to board enemy ships and applies a debuff for every shuttle that makes it through their point defense.* BondVillainStupidity: Played perfectly straight by [[spoiler:Hakeev]], right down to the EvilGloating, after cornering you in a cutscene in the "Cloaked Intentions" feature episode series. [[spoiler:He spends ''just'' long enough gloating that your ship is able to arrive and beam you out right as his men try to execute you by firing squad. The BigNo this gets from him is worth a laugh.]]* BoringButPractical: If you're looking to create a ship build for the first time once you hit level cap, nothing says basic like picking up common (white) Mk XI gear. The Exchange usually sells these for much less than their normal value, meaning you can set up a ship build for under 200,000 EC if you play your cards right.** The Mirror Universe ships are also this. While they tend to just have a different [=BOFF=] and Console layout than their normal counterpart and don't come with any neat equipment save for a different ship skin, they are insanely cheap (going for as low as 95k EC) and, especially with the recent releases for the Federation, makes obtaining certain ships easier. This also goes for the Mirror Universe ships' replacement, the Kazon Raider. Even if you're one of those guys who think the same way as the Borg and think they're all just junk.** In the same vein, the normal Tier V freebie ships you get. They're not as flashy as the C-Store, Lockbox or Lobi ships, but in a pinch, they'll pull you through.** A Science Bridge Officer's Tractor Beam ability. Doesn't launch a MacrossMissileMassacre of torpedo's. Doesn't power up your beam array weapons or allow BeamSpam, doesn't grant your Heavy Cannons MoreDakka. All it does, is severely slow the speed and turn rate of a nearby targeted enemy ship and do a little bit of Kinetic type damage. Which allows the Tractor beam user to unleash a devastating barrage of firepower on an area of the enemy's ship with weak shields and/or exposed hull. The Borg Cube NPC enemies, in particular love showing new players just how deadly a Tractor Beam can combo with other weapons.** Beam Arrays. In terms of firepower of the various ship weapon types, Beam Arrays sit on the low side of damage output. But next to Turrets, they have the second highest field of fire arc, fire 4 times per use, can take advantage of a large number of BOFF abilities, are good at taking down shields, and fairly easy on the Weapon system power loads. The fact that the Mid to End Game Cruisers, typically mount no less than at least 4 of them (2 Fore, 2 Aft), turns them into BeamSpam shooting terrors in a broadside fight.* BottomlessMagazines:** The Zefram Cochrane shotgun from the 2014 Mirror Invasion event has an unlimited supply of 12 gauge shells and never needs reloading.** On a larger scale, ships in space combat never run out of torpedoes, mines, or other projectile weapons.* BrainwashedAndCrazy: [[spoiler: Praetor Taris seems to be this. She's pretty much unflinchingly loyal to her "dread masters", and for a Romulan that is ''weird''.]]* BribingYourWayToVictory: A whole bunch of things, both gameplay-affecting and cosmetic, can only be obtained using "Zen", which must first be purchased by someone on Perfect World Entertainment's website. Having said that, they can then be sold again in exchange for Dilithium, which any player can get a fair amount of every day. So, while ''someone'' has to spend real money eventually, it doesn't have to be you.** Of course, you can earn all the Dilithium Ore you want, but it must be refined before you can spend it, and you can only refine [[{{Cap}} 8000 per day]]. At current rates[[note]]143 dilithium to 1 Zen; Apr 24 2014[[/note]], that translates to roughly 56 Zen per day. Most items cost 400 Zen or more. [[MagnificentBastard Cryptic Studios know what they're doing.]] Granted, it's 8000 ''per character'', and even free players that refuse to invest a cent into the game get three character slots. Still, you can't transfer unrefined dilithium between characters, so that means you have to spend the time to earn 8000 dilithium ''per character'' if you want to reach the full cap.*** More subtly, many things one can spend money on encourage spending money on ''other'' things. Want a screen-accurate Scimitar? You need to buy all three versions for the gear that lets you have the original's resilient shields and the ability to raise them and fire your weapons while cloaked. The Thalaron weapon is the set bonus for having all that gear equipped on one ship.** There are also certain ships, non-combat pets, uniforms, and other items that are exclusive to 'veteran' players who purchased paid subscriptions.* TheBridge: Players can choose from several different bridge layouts for their ships.* BridgeBunnies: ''Customizable'' Bunnies, no less. Yes, [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paLanXn6m94 if you're a male captain you can have an all-female bridge crew.]] [[MrFanservice Yes, if you're a female captain you can have an all-male bridge crew with flattering shirts.]] They also serve as the cornerstone of your away teams, especially if playing solo or in a small group. Cryptic has stated you can have upwards of ''twelve'' of them under your command, as well.** [[http://www.egscomics.com/egsnp/?date=2010-02-05 Illustrated quite well in this El Goonish Shive strip.]]* BreakOutTheMuseumPiece:** The TOS ''Constitution''-class starships, complete with blue phasers, as well as the Connie Refit skin for the Tier 2 cruiser. The ''Miranda''-class are also still going, while a refit ''Excelsior''-class can be bought and is actually considered one of the top four Starfleet DPS cruisers. The NX-class would seem to be this, being over 250 years old at this point, but is actually a ''replica'' with modern systems (apparently the Corps of Engineers got bored or something).** As of the game's Third Year Anniversary event, the ''Ambassador''-class - the same class as the ill-fated ''Enterprise''-C - is also available, both as a mid-tier cruiser and as a retrofitted end-game cruiser, where it serves as a [[JackofAllStats Jack of All Stats]] in-between the damage oriented Starfleet cruisers and the tanking oriented Stafleet Cruisers. Not quite an elder statesman to the same extent as the ''Miranda'' or ''Excelsior'', but still pushing a century old.** The Romulan side in ''Legacy of Romulus'' plays this far more literally - your starting vessel is the ancient TOS-era ''T'liss''-class warbird your hometown's mayor used to command, and you and Khev take it as it's your only real ticket out of Dodge. Veril comments later that she's ''amazed'' it hasn't fallen apart around your ears before she came along, and straight-up calls your singularity core an antique.* BreatherEpisode: "Cold Comfort" in the Breen series. The episode features no combat whatsoever, and only several dialog puzzles.* BusCrash: In episode "Cardassian Struggle", mission "Badlands", you meet Joshua Riker, the son of Thomas Riker, William Riker's accidental clone who was last heard from when he surrendered to the Cardassians in ''[[Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine DS9]]'': "[[Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS03E09Defiant Defiant]]". After the Dominion War resulted in the collapse of the Cardassian Union and the barely averted extinction of the species, the prison camp where he was held was abandoned by the government, and the prisoners turned it into a settlement under Tom Riker's leadership. Tom died of heart failure after rescuing his wife when she fell into a ravine.* BuzzingTheDeck: Episode "Cardassian Struggle", mission "Rapier". After exiting the Bajoran wormhole you can buzz Ops on Deep Space 9. This grants an accolade titled [[Film/TopGun "That's a Negative Ghost Rider, The Pattern Is Full"]].* CallAHitPointASmeerp: You don't often see a Starfleet captain looting destroyed ships and tacking their disruptors and engine arrays onto their own ship. Of course, in the game you can equip all kinds of weapons you pick up as random drops. Janeway did it a few times.* CallBack: The future of the Trek verse depicted here is a close, but not quite version of the BadFuture from the Next Gen Finale, ''All Good Things''. However, it appears Picard did slightly alter that future: its still bleak but [[BittersweetEnding it has alot more hope in it.]]* CanonDiscontinuity: While Cryptic does have the option of incorporating any "soft canon" such as other games or novels as they see fit (see AscendedFanon below), they've also outright discarded certain soft canon events, such as the entirety of the ''Literature/StarTrekDestiny'' novel trilogy and its immediate successors.** The ''Literature/StarTrekVoyagerRelaunch'' novels are a good example, as only ''some'' of them are in the bin. A character who was KilledOffForReal there ([[spoiler:Janeway]]) is alive and well here. Having said that, another plot point introduced there ([[spoiler:that Miral Paris is the ''Kuvah'magh'', TheChosenOne for the Klingon people]]) is ''also'' alive and well here.** The wholesale discarding of ''Destiny'' likely stems from the fact that the initial plot outlines and whatnot for ''STO'' were being drawn up in 2008, and the Cryptic team wasn't included in the discussions of how everything would go down - never mind the fact that a lot of non-novel readers would be constantly asking "when are the Borg going to appear?"* TheCavalry:** In "Devil's Choice" the Klingons and Federation both send fleets to help defend New Romulus against an Elachi invasion.** In the ultimate battle for Deep Space 9 in "Boldly They Rode", despite preparing for the battle, the forces to recover Deep Space 9 ''still'' find themselves being pushed back. That is until Captain Shon [[spoiler: of the Odyssey Class U.S.S. Enterprise-F]] arrives to help turn the tide of the battle.** In "Revelations" the player and the Turei are being pressed hard by the [[spoiler:Vaadwaur]]. [[spoiler:Then two Voth mechs, allies of the Turei, drop in and start in on the Vaadwaur as heavy armor support. The Turei return the favor along with ''Voyager'' in "All that Glitters".]]** If [[spoiler: the Kazon]] are called in early enough in "Takedown", another smaller group of them show up later to reinforce you due to disliking the way [[spoiler: Maje Sessen]] had arranged for the official [[spoiler: Kazon]] contribution to [[CavalryBetrayal secretly be on the other side]].* CavalryBetrayal: "Takedown" includes a multi-stage space battle where you call in one group of allies at a time. [[spoiler: The Kazon]] join up with the Vaadwaur instead when called in. It doesn't really work out for them, since Captain Kim observes he never really trusted them to begin with, and had worked with Admiral Tuvok on a contingency in case something like this happened ([[spoiler: calling in a group of Hirogen who would be more than happy to hunt Kazon and Vaadwaur for a while]]).* CaptainErsatz:** If you look around, you will find a lot of custom species characters of non-Trek alien species, recreated to varying degrees of accuracy.** The Ferasans are essentially this of the Kzinti from ''Literature/KnownSpace'', who were unable to be used for [[ScrewedByTheLawyers copyright reasons]]. Their previous appearance in ''Trek'' happened with permission of Creator/LarryNiven's estate.** The new ''Avenger''-class battlecruiser is clearly one of the U.S.S. ''Vengeance'' from ''Film/StarTrekIntoDarkness'' and the Borg Modified Romulan Lockbox ships are this of the ''Narada'' from ''Film/StarTrek'' (in fact, the storyline ship the Borg Modified Romulan Lockbox ships are based on was originally identified as Narada-class -- presumably the fact that technically the ''Narada'' is from the Prime Timeline gave them some leeway). Note that Cryptic cannot use anything from the Alternate Timeline Treks.* CasualInterstellarTravel: More so than the rest of ''Franchise/StarTrek'', necessarily due to it being an MMO played in real-time.* CatFolk: The Caitians and the Ferasans.* ChainsawGripBFG: Blast assault and assault minigun ground weapons.* TheChainsOfCommanding: The Duty Officer System. Nearly every assignment has a risk to your crew. This means that ''yes'', they can come back on death's door, and ''yes'', they ''can'' actually die (though only if they're of "common" rarity). With this knowledge, do you send your crewmates on a risky recon mission? Do you send your medical staff to fight an outbreak of a deadly plague?* ChainLightning: A few ship weapons and abilities act this way; the Isometric Charge being the most literal one as it fires a ball of electricity that jumps from one target to the next (so long as there's several enemies in close proximity of each other), doing progressively more damage with each hit. The Refracting Tetryon weapons and active ability from the Nukara reputation also work in a similar fashion.* CharacterCustomization: Just in case we haven't hammered it home yet: '''[[SerialEscalation Mother. Of. God.]]'''** While STO comes with an amazing variety of options to customize a character's head and allows for pretty alien looking body proportions, the options for clothing and non-humanoid body parts are far behind those of VideoGame/ChampionsOnline's. This is especially noticable on the Klingon side, where many costume pieces are only available to specific races. [[MyRulesAreNotYourRules Of course, [=NPC=]s get no such limitations at all.]]** The Klingons also got the short straw for ship customization, with only two designs per ship instead of the Federation's usual three, and even then it took quite a long time before any of them even got a second appearance or allowed you to customize different parts of the ship such as the hull and nacelles.** Certain Bridge Officers you gain through different means avert this. The Breen, Jem'Hadar and Reman [=BOFFs=] you gain from their Featured Episodes, the Borg you gain from the STF "Khitomer in Stasis", the Romulan Borg and Photonic Tactical Officer you buy with Lobi and [[spoiler:the Voth you rescue at the end of the Dyson Sphere Reputation Line]] cannot be modified in any way. Not even their names.* ChekhovsGun: In one story mission, [[spoiler: an Andorian scientist you've just rescued makes an offhand comment about making progress on a cure for irumodic syndrome.]] Anyone who has seen [[Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration The Next Generation's series finale]] knows the possible [[note]]and potentially awesome[[/note]] implications of this.* CivilWar: According to blogs released by the developers leading up to Season 7, it appears the Romulans are falling into this in an attempt to fill the power vacuum left by [[spoiler: Empress Sela's disappearance]] since the mission "Cutting the Cord". As [[AllThereInTheManual 'The Path to 2409']] makes clear, it wouldn't be the first time in recent decades. Or the fifth. Or the sixth. Once Legacy of Romulus was released, it turned out that it had been slightly misleading -- the Romulans already ''were'' falling into this before the spoilered event, with the Romulan Republic (supported by the Federation and the Klingon Empire) on one side and the Tal Shiar and Sela's Star Empire on the other. If anything the spoilered event cut the civil war short, as [[spoiler: Sela's disappearance and Hakeev's death in the same incident]] caused the Star Empire side to disintegrate with the Republic already there to fill the power vacuum.* Cliffhanger: [[spoiler:The mission "A Step Between Stars" end with this, as we see Koren, Shon and Kaol walking away from each other after the rediscovery of the Jenolan Dyson Sphere.]]* ClownCar:** The Klingon Vo'Quv carriers, Fek'Ihri Kar'Fi battle carriers, Orion battleships, Corsair flight deck cruisers, Federation/Caitian Atrox Carriers and the cross-faction Obelisk Carrier can all carry an almost ridiculous number of fighters, and have no qualms about spitting out squadron upon squadron to take you out. Hell, the Vo'Quv, Kar'Fi, Sarr Theln, and Jem'Hadar Dreadnought Carrier can each carry ''frigates''.** With the Obelisk and its "swarmers", this is even invoked, as the Obelisk is meant to fight by spewing endless numbers of drone fighters at you until you're overwhelmed.** In an even more painful example the standard "crew deck corridor" for most ships is 180 meters long. Even on ships that only have a 150m saucer section (fleet science vessel retrofit). * ColdBloodedTorture: [[spoiler: The experiments done to Captain Shon and the Romulan who went with him in "Sphere of Influence", inflicted by the solanogen-based race seen in TNG. Shon had his ''left arm and both antennae ripped off, then reattached, as well as being injected with various other painful substances. The Romulan had his entire blood volume replaced with some sort of polymer''... luckily you managed to save Shon.]]** The Tal Shiar is also fond of using prisoners as guinea pigs for testing salvaged Borg technology, as the Romulan Republic player witnesses in "Mind Game" and the Federation player ''almost'' witnesses in ''Desperate Measures'' (the Federation player arrive between batches, and promptly destroys the Tal Shiar contingent and rescues the remaining prisoners).* ColorCodedForYourConvenience: Each playable faction has it's own color scheme (carried over from the TV series and movies), which extends to the colors on the walls, lighting, map sections, etc. The Federation is blue/white, Klingons are red, Romulans are green.* CombatMedic: The Federation employs NPC's seen on ground missions that are specifically called this; they have higher health and shields than normal medics, and stronger abilities as well, making them an even [[ShootTheMedicFirst higher-priority target]] when you find yourself fighting against them.** The Romulans and Voth have their own versions as well.* CombatTentacles: ** The Aehallh worms found in the Colliseum aren't ''exactly'' tentacles, but they're pretty close.** Changelings like to choke your character by the throat and toss you around like a ragdoll by this method.* CompanyTown: The player can be sent to a planet with a Romulan mining town, completely controlled by a Ferengi and a mining company.* CompetitiveBalance: The idea between the three classes and ship types. Players can customize themselves to extend beyond the original class they chose through skill point distribution.* TheComputerIsACheatingBastard: The D'deridex Warbirds used by the Romulans and Remans can fire several heavy plasma torpedoes in a row at you. Player ships are only capable of shooting one of these at a time.** Averted in Season 7 with the introduction of the Romulan Hyper Plasma Torpedo launcher obtainable from the Romulan reputation system.* ConflictBall: To people who haven't gotten deep into the STO universe and plotlines (and maybe even to some who have), the whole Federation-Klingon conflict can easily seem to be a contrived reason to have StuffBlowingUp.* ContinuityNod / CallBack: The game is positively dripping with them to the point they could warrant their own page.** The Wolf 359 System. Especially with the Federation memorial in the middle (when you get close you start to hear the comm traffic from the battle).** [[Series/StarTrekVoyager Naomi Wildman]] is the commander of Deep Space K-7. Icheb appears as a mission giver, too.** [[Series/StarTrekVoyager Miral Paris]] is a plot-centric character whose storyline first introduces you to [[spoiler: the Guardian of Forever and the MirrorUniverse.]]** Akira Sulu is the Great-Grandson of Mr. Sulu.** [[Series/StarTrekVoyager Admiral Janeway.]]** Among the ships you will hear about will be USS ''Kirk,'' USS ''[=McCoy=],'' USS ''Montgomery Scott,'' USS ''Archer'' and USS ''Tucker,'' among others.** Sela is the Romulan Empress. Not too many people mind any of this, and it's all quite well-explained.** The Galaxy-Class bridge set alone has plenty. The side consoles from ''[[Film/StarTrekGenerations Generations]]'', the modified tactical console from the [[FutureBadass future Enterprise-D]] in "All Good Things", and a large transparent console panel behind the tactical station ''very'' similar to the one seen in the ''TNG'' seventh season episode "Parallels".** One of the engineers over at Memory Alpha is ''[[Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine Kirayoshi O'Brien.]]''** One of the Starfleet contacts at K-7 is [[StarTrekNewFrontier Mackenzie Calhoun]].** Deep in Cardassian space, you will encounter Joshua Riker, the son of a transporter-created clone of old Will Riker.** [[spoiler: And then, who should show up from the mirror universe? Captain James ''O'Brien''. Aboard the [[MeaningfulName ISS ''Molly.'']]]]** Expect to encounter any and ''all'' types of food that are ever shown or mentioned throughout any of the series, including ''Chateau Picard'' wine. They even have Prune Juice, repeatedly [[Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration mentioned]] and [[Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine referenced]] as Worf's drink of choice.** The entrance to the [[spoiler: Preserver archive]] resembles the Asteroid Deflector from the [[Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries TOS episode "The Paradise Syndrome"]]** "The 2800" story arc is not only a continuity nod but also a ''continuation of a story arc from one of the series''. [[spoiler: A Dominion fleet suddenly emerges from the wormhole, attacking (and taking over) Deep Space 9, and still thinking the Dominion war is still going on despite checking a calendar since then.]] Starfleet is baffled by where they came from. [[spoiler: It's the same fleet that the Prophets had seemingly willed out of existence when Captain Sisko and the ''Defiant'' single-handedly headed into the wormhole to confront. Turns out they just kicked the Jemmies 35 years into the future.]]** Gul Madred from the TNG episode "Chain of Command I & II" is the leader of the Cardassian side of the True Way Alliance. Pity, though, that player captains never get the chance to debate with him whether there are four lights or five...** Admiral Chakotay was promoted to the head of Starfleet Intelligence in 2406, and thanks to Voyager's encounters with the Undine, he was able to convince Starfleet to start "expecting" them to be among personnel, and start developing technology to help detect Undine Infiltrators.** Much like the 2800 story arc, the 3rd Year Anniversary mission is a direct continuation of a series episode, this time from TNG and the episode being Yesterday's Enterprise.** Many of the Exploration Missions are directly these, involving the Gorgons, the burial remains of the dead alien race from "Masks", and various other stuff (though it tends to play out Kirk-style).** The mission "Sphere of Influence", introduced in the lead-up to the launch of season 8, could be considered a giant collection of callbacks; the commander of the Romulans' new flagship is the daughter of Alidar Jarok from the ''TNG'' episode "The Defector", the player sees a couple of planets from episodes of ''Deep Space Nine'' and ''Voyager'', and the aliens encountered in the mission are the same ones that abducted and experimented on the crew of the ''Enterprise''-D in the ''TNG'' episode "Schisms". And of course the entire mission follows up on the ''TNG'' episode ''Contagion'' and the ''[=DS9=]'' episode ''To the Death'' with Iconian gateways.** A possible result of getting a critical success on a Temporal Trade assignment (which you can only access with one-use items potentially found in an opened Temporal Lock Box) is to get a very rare (human-looking) duty officer named Isis. [[Recap/StarTrekS2E26AssignmentEarth Her quote is 'Meow', and her species is marked down as Alien (which STO uses as a general term for anyone that doesn't have a specific species assigned)]].** The Dyson Sphere seen in TNG's "Relics" makes an appearance in "A Step Between Stars" and "Surface Tension", and becomes the Delta Alliance's main base of operations in the Delta Quadrant.** Almost all of the content released with Delta Rising is a reference to ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'', with a couple of references to ''TNG'' added in as well (the 'neural parasites' from "Conspiracy" and Hugh, the liberated Borg drone from "I Borg" and "Descent").** Two of the ships on the new Earth Spacedock picket fleet are the [[VideoGame/StarTrekBridgeCommander U.S.S. Sovereign and the U.S.S. Geronimo.]]** The commander of the U.S.S. Kirk is an Andorian named Captain [[Recap/StarTrekTheAnimatedSeriesS1E2Yesteryear Thelin]].* ConvectionSchmonvection: An early mission in the Romulan story arc places you on a planet that has active volcanic activity on the surface (along with local plant life that thrives in the lava). You can walk all over it and it won't hurt you.* ConvergingStreamWeapon: Just as seen in ''Voyager'', the Undine's original method of destroying a planet or other large target [[spoiler: such as a Borg Unimatrix Command Ship in "Fluid Dynamics"]] is to have several ships arrange themselves in formation and all divert energy to a ship in the middle which then fires a huge beam at the target, annihilating it in one shot. The Undine Planet Killers seen in "Surface Tension" and onward use this as well, but it's not as impressive as the multi-ship formation.* CooldownManipulation: ** The tactical captain ability "Tactical Initiative" halves the remaining cooldown on any tactical bridge officer ([[FanNickname "boff"]]) powers. [[invoked]]** The science captain ability "Subnucleonic Beam" increases the target's boff power cooldowns, in addition to [[StatusBuffDispel wiping out active buffs]]. Intelligence boffs can use a variant of this power with an AreaOfEffect. [[invoked]]** Certain duty officers ([[FanNickname "doffs"]]) have the ability to reduce cooldowns. The popular [[FanNickname "aux2batt build"]] uses three Technician doffs to reduce all currently active cooldowns to the global minimum each time Auxiliary Power to the Emergency Battery is triggered, effectively doubling the rate at which you can trigger boff powers. [[invoked]]* CoolShades: Several different styles of shades have been added in the annual summer events, as well as part of the intelligence operative costume sets introduced in Delta Rising.* CoolStarship: Many ships from across Trek canon have made their way into the game (Including an old-fashioned Constitution-Class and Miranda Class as starting vessels), and a few have been made especially for it, such as the mighty [[http://www.startrekonline.com/ships/odyssey Odyssey]] and [[http://www.startrekonline.com/node/2842 Bortas]] end-game ships.* CostumePorn: Whilst Cryptic's dedication to character customisation meant there was always a small element of this, the game dived right in with Legacy of Romulus and the elaborate Romulan outfits.* CPRCleanPrettyReliable / WorstAid: This was the original way to revive a downed character. It has since been replaced with a quick tricorder scan.* CrapsackOnlyByComparison: Things have gone downhill compared to the era the shows took place in, but it's still a much better world to live in than say, the settings of VideoGame/DeadSpace or VideoGame/MassEffect3.* CrapsackWorld: Nimbus III. It was bad in Film/StarTrekVTheFinalFrontier. But the Federation pulled out a hundred years ago in game ( [[ShownTheirWork and in the Expanded Universe]] ). Now its home to nothing but raiders, pirates, slavery, prostitution and nightclubs.* CreatureBreedingMechanic: There's tribble breeding, done by either leaving the tribble in inventory with particular foods, or by duty officer assignments found in your ship interior. The former creates a new tribble, the latter transforms your old one. Different tribbles grant different buffs: for example feeding a tribble ketracel-white will produce a tribble that buffs your damage against Jem'Hadar.* CripplingOverspecialization: The Federation's Dreadnought Cruiser and the recent Dyson Science Destroyers force a certain energy type (phasers and proton, respectively) that either force you to work a weapon build around it or ignore it completely. The Tactical Escort Refit and the Multi-Mission Explorer ships do the same, but their gimmick weapons can be removed, thus you're not bound to it.* CriticalExistenceFailure: Ships suffer damage and systems can be affected, but until you suffer a warp-core breach (read: death), there's no downward spiral of failing systems, like the shows.** Zig-zagged; as your health drops scorch marks will appear, followed by your engines going haywire and multiple decks showing hull breaches and fires.* CrystalSpiresAndTogas: The Deferi come pretty close.* CustomUniform: The developers were able to {{Handwave}} the glaring flaw about Starfleet's uniform code by stating in one of the LoadingScreen notes that Starfleet relaxed their uniform codes to help its officers feel a little more comfortable, just as long as they still wore their primary color associated with their position. The last part happens pretty much only by playerbase preference and is regularly violated. After season 9, it's only player characters; everybody else wears Odyssey uniforms.* CuttingTheKnot: The "Azure Nebula Rescue" raid provides a game mechanics example. The procedure intended by the devs is to destroy the Tholian ships before releasing tractored Romulan ships from docks built into the side of asteroids. But the way the objectives are coded[[note]]you're scored based on how many ships you rescue, not how many Tholians you kill[[/note]] and the Tholians positioned means that it's perfectly possible, if somewhat difficult, to sneak up from the far side of the asteroid and release the pointy-ears without ever even aggro'ing the Tholians.[[/folder]][[folder:Tropes D-G]]* DarkestHour: The situation at the end of "A Step Between Stars": [[spoiler:With the rediscovery of the Jenolan Dyson Sphere thanks to the actions of the Undine, the alliance between the Federation, Klingons and Romulans are on shaky ground, due to the fact that all three want the Jenolan Sphere - The Federation because they had found it first over 40 years ago, the Romulans because it's connected to the Solenae Dyson Sphere and the Klingons because they want a super weapon, too! It doesn't help that Koren and Shon are HotBlooded JerkAss people.]]* DarkhorseVictory: The Romulan Republic might just be the greatest example of this trope. The Romulans spent 20 years trying to rebuild the old Star Empire and never really suceeded (Sela being closest and only through ruling with an iron fist and murdering her own kind via the Tal Shiar & Hakeev). Over the course of a single year three groups of people: D'Tan and his aides, Obisek and his Reman Rebels, and the Romulan Player Character and their crew unite the Romulans under a new banner and make them the second largest superpower in the Quadrant (edging out the Klingons!). All thanks to a Reunificationist, the sacrifice of one of his aides, a Reman soldier and his rebel militia, and a rag tag warbird crew led by a '''''farmer!'''''* DeathFromAbove:** The various mortar weapons that can be erected by Engineering players & NPC's during ground missions.** The swarmer drones in the ground portion of the Solanae Dyson Sphere never miss a chance to take pot shots at players from overhead.** The accolade you get in "Cutting the Cord" by marking targets for OrbitalBombardment is literally called "Death from Above".* DeathIsASlapOnTheWrist: If a player is killed or has their ship destroyed (possibly killing them), they can simply respawn with their ship shiny and new...minus a few RedShirts. And the dead redshirts will be restored after a short period of time. Presumably Starfleet ships are crewed by Tribbles. Mitigated somewhat by the addition of the difficulty slider, which adds a death penalty at higher levels in the form of injuries, which can be removed at starbases or with items. Elite-ranked raids always have injuries turned on.* DeathWorld: Nukara Prime, a Y class "Demon" planet with a surface temperature of 500 degrees Kelvin, a corrosive sulphuric atmosphere, and rivers of acid. Players are REQUIRED to wear environmental suits if they don't want to be immediately engulfed in flames and die a gruesome death by bursting into ashes.* DecliningPromotion: An odd variant: despite the fact that you become a Vice Admiral/Lt. General at level 50, you're ''still'' in command of a single ship where most would be on the sidelines commanding whole ''fleets'' of ships.* DefeatEqualsExplosion: Par for the course with space combat. The initial explosion of a ship can damage you, but a few seconds later the warp core blows up for a second explosion. For ground combat, while most enemies who die from an "exposed" attack get vaporized, Tholians can actually self destruct, causing damage to anything around it. Mechanical devices, such as the various turrets and whatnot also explode when they're destroyed.* DefeatMeansPlayable: The special reward for defeating the Breen during the Deferi story arc? A Breen bridge officer. Repeated with the Romulan/Reman missions, though technically it's [[spoiler:the Romulans]] you're defeating and [[spoiler:a Reman bridge officer]] joining you. It's also repeated in the Jem'Hadar missions.* DefectorFromDecadence: The entire Reman Rebellion is this to what's left of the paranoid Romulan Government. And You in the Legacy of Romulus.* DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment: [[LampshadeHanging Lampshaded]] by Y'Dren in the mission "The Dragon's Deceit":--> '''Y'Dren''': "Alpha Quadrant tech has too many redundancies; you've got backups for your backups, and none of it matters because emergency power always fails in an emergency."* DesignItYourselfEquipment: The player's ship.* DetachmentCombat: Several ships can turn parts of themselves into separate, independent craft, increasing their firepower and distracting the enemy. The Galaxy-class can detach its saucer, the Bortasqu' can deploy a heavily-armed escort ship, [[BreadEggsBreadedEggs and the Advanced Odyssey can either detach its saucer or deploy a heavily-armed escort ship]]. The Prometheus-class escort takes the prize, though - true to [[Series/StarTrekVoyager the series]], it can split itself into ''three'' equally-powerful ships, and you can choose which one you want to command the formation from.* TheDevTeamThinksOfEverything: Recently, Cryptic's been tossing in various things towards certain classes, races, ships and the like in certain stages.** If a Klingon PlayerCharacter or boff tries to activate a tribble, the tribble will squeal and not give them its buff, in accordance with their behavior near Klingons in ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'': "[[Recap/StarTrekS2E15TheTroubleWithTribbles The Trouble with Tribbles]]". (They don't like Gorn or Nausicaans either, though they don't have a problem with Letheans or Orions.) This only applies to the normal tribbles however, as the special ones that provide a unique effect other than simple healing can be used by characters of any race.** With the Season 6 update, all enemies started using more level appropriate skills to add a little more challenge. Enemies can now use the same skills that players use. Gravity Wells, Ejecting Warp Plasma, various healing abilities, etc. Klingons in particular now use Bio-Neural Warheads. They're a bit like Tricobalt Devices, but ''exceptionally'' more powerful and have built-in antiproton blasters to bore a hole in your shields before impact. This invoked a bit of FridgeLogic among the player community. Certain missions involves the player traveling back in time to the 23rd Century, where they interact with with Dr. [=McCoy=], Scottie, Spock, and even save the original ''Enterprise'' in battle. Some players think that the Klingons of that era shouldn't have access to these weapons, but the developers wrote into the story that Admiral B'Vat went back in time and shared his new technology with his old self long before the Season 6 patch was even planned.** Also leave tribbles in your inventory and some food? Well when you log back in the food is going to be gone and more tribbles will be there. This is used by player to get better tribbles. There is ''one'' exception, however: ''Polygeminus grex canibalis'' does not eat food in your inventory. They eat ''other tribbles'' in your inventory. * DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu: The Fek'lhri arc basically involves carving your way through TheLegionsOfHell, confronting Klingon Satan, and sticking a bat'leth through his face. [[spoiler:Although your science officer suggests it was a technological simulation of some kind and that the Hur'q were involved.]]* DifficultButAwesome: The handful of larger ships that can mount cannons, like smaller and faster-turning escorts. Trying to keep cannons on a target with a cruiser's turn rate would be completely impractical, and requires unorthodox tactics:** The Galaxy-X dreadnaught has a cloaking device; a skilled player can use this to sneak up on an unsuspecting ship, de-cloak as close as possible and unload on the target before it has a chance to move out of range. The ship's unique phaser spinal lance does huge damage in a single shot (if it hits; the accuracy is pathetic), and fires twice when triggered; it's more than enough to ensure the first volley is fatal against another player ship in [=PvP=] if weapons are fired in the right order, fast enough so the target can't pop any defensive buffs. When the ship is already in combat and can't cloak right away, Tractor and Repulser beams can be used to keep the target in front and a Subspace Jump Console can be used to teleport the Galaxy-X directly behind a target, facing it.** The Klingon Bortasqu' comes with a Subspace Snare Console that takes a different approach than the Subspace Jump Console; it teleports the ''target'' in front of the ship.** The T5 ''D'deridex''-class gets a lot of flak for its (apparent) low turning despite being able to mount dual cannons. This isn't helped by the Romulans' sharply limited ship selection, which results in the free T4 ''D'deridex'' coming right after the much zippier ''Mogai''-class. But the Romulan battle cloak common to all warbirds allows it to turn much faster while cloaked, and having access to lieutenant commander boff powers in all three disciplines is all but unheard-of.* DiscOneFinalBoss: B'vat, Hakeev and Kar'ukan.* DisneyVillainDeath: [[spoiler:Taris]] in "Uneasy Allies".* DoABarrelRoll: One of the new pilot skills released in ''Delta Rising''. And, unlike ''VideoGame/StarFox'', this is an ''actual'' Barrel Roll.* DoNotRunWithAGun: You cannot run and shoot at the same time in ground missions. Similarly, firing weapons (or taking fire, for that matter) in space missions will drop your ship from full impulse to a slower maneuvering speed. Full impulse will also divert some of your weapon power to the engines as well.* DoingInTheWizard: KDF-side, your science officer suggests after the fact that the battle in [[spoiler:Gre'thor]] may have been AllJustADream and that the [[spoiler:Fek'Ihri]] were created by biotech, possibly by the Hur'q. [[AbortedArc Nothing ever comes of this.]]* DramaticSpaceDrifting* DrivenToSuicide: [[spoiler: K'Valk in the Doomsday Machine due to his part in helping the machine being activated. See Heroic Sacrifice below.]]* DropPod: Episode "The Delta Quadrant", mission "Revelations". The Vaadwaur used them to invade the Turei homeworld, enabling them to punch through the orbital defense grid and sabotage it from below. They also appear in several other instances where the player faces Vaadwaur ground forces, and are equipped with built-in transporters, allowing them to rapidly reinforce positions once the initial force has gotten a foothold.* DudeWheresMyRespect:** The game ties CharacterLevel to your player character's military rank in Starfleet, the Klingon Defense Force, or the Romulan Republican Force. This is tolerable up to level 39 (Captain or equivalent and below), but after that, not only are you an admiral running around in a ship, but by the time you hit the level cap at 60 (Fleet Admiral), you actually ''outrank'' every mission giver in the entire game giver Fleet Admiral Quinn, Chancellor J'mpok, and Admiral Kererek, and have probably seen more combat in the last year than some of them have in their entire careers. And yet O-7s and below still love to order you around like you're a totally green ensign and in some cases force you to personally complete tasks more suited to junior enlisted personnel. On the face of it, the season 8.5 featured episode "A Step Between Stars", where literally nobody in the entire mission ''except'' the PlayerCharacter ranks higher than Rear Admiral Lower-Half, can seem particularly silly about it.\\\\Interestingly, though, ''A Step Between Stars'' manages to [[ZigZaggingTrope zig-zag this]]. Your initial orders come from Joint Command, and while it is headed by a Subcommander (because the Romulan Republic is still small and is low on high ranking officers but are still the only neutral party between the FED-KDF War and this new alliance), he is in command of the Task Force which DOES make him your superior officer despite being of inferior rank, simply because he is the CO (although that doesn't explain why they couldn't have just promoted him). The next time someone ignores your advice is when Tuvok offers to let you shutdown the station (and open an Iconian Gateway at the same time). If the player tells Tuvok no, he'll do it anyway - which is actually still OK, because Tuvok's orders are to shutdown the station at any cost. ''Orders that didn't come from you.'' He was only giving you the option because you're of senior rank and have had more experience with this technology. And the last time someone subverts an order from you is if you ''provoke the captain of your opposing faction (or allied faction for Romulans) into a fire fight.'' As a Starfleet Admiral, you just proposed opening fire on the Klingons as the war was winding down, which could easily lead to your court martial. As a Klingon General, he's not just telling you to calm down but also Shon as well before things lead to the war going hot again. And as a Romulan Admiral, ''you're threatening your own government's diplomatic status by instigating both the Klingons and Starfleet into a war that could have the Romulans in the crossfire.'' Beyond that, your orders are followed (i.e. telling Tuvok what to do with Cooper, what defense strategy to take, telling Tuvok to the communicator while you get the Voth explosives), it's when you act like an InsaneAdmiral that the [[WhatTheHellHero [=NPC=]s tell you eat shit]].** [[AvertedTrope Averted]] again in "Surface Tension". The player's admiralty rank becomes a minor plot point, with the player taking command of the task force.** And averted by Captain Harry Kim in ''Delta Rising'', who makes a point of giving the PC the respect due his superior officer.* DumpStat: For a long time, ground combat skills were a DumpStat because most players didn't want to waste valuable skillpoints on it when space combat was considered to be much more fun and the primary appeal of the game. This was changed, making it mandatory to invest 20% of one's skillpoints into ground skills, but mercifully added 20% more total skillpoints to allow for this without ruining the builds that veteran players had created. Now the DumpStat is a matter of playstyle: most players neglect science skills in favor of [[MoreDakka tactical]] and engineering (healing and survivability) skills unless they fly science ships. For science ship captains, tactical skills are the least relevant since they have fewer weapons per ship than either escorts or cruisers and they rely more on control and damage abilities in the science skill tree.* DysonSphere: Season 8 introduces one as a new zone for starships to fly around inside and explore. A related Republic Intelligence debriefing also mentions the Jenolan Dyson Sphere of TNG fame, noting its disappearance as one of the oddities that started happening after you [[spoiler: unlocked the entire Iconian gateway network]]...** [[spoiler:GhostShip: The Dyson Joint Rep Tier 1 and Tier 2 completion cutscenes reveal two things about the Dyson Sphere: that this was made by the Iconians as a means to get away and, mysteriously, it was left abandoned.]]*** Later on, there's a dispute between the three superpowers over possession of the Jenolan Dyson Sphere and that [[spoiler:there's a ''third'' one. And it's armed to the teeth with Iconian ships.]]* EarlyBirdCameo: Because the 3rd Year Anniversary mission, "Temporal Ambassador", was placed at the end of the Klingon War storyline, new players, especially in the Federation, get to meet Obisek and T'nae before their story takes place.* EarthShatteringKaboom:** The Planet Killer (yes, ''[[Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries that]]'' Planet Killer) does this to a planet in a cutscene to give the player an idea just what kind of power they're up against.** The Dewans apparently did this to themselves when they hooked an Iconian gateway up to a geothermal power system and tried to activate it, wiping themselves out and leaving Dewa III (or New Romulus as it would later be known) uninhabitable for centuries.** The Undine do this to Kessek IV in "A Gathering Darkness" after the planet has been entirely assimilated by the Borg. They also intend to do this to [[spoiler: Qo'noS]] in "Surface Tension" and several other worlds in the Alpha and Beta quadrants in the "Undine Assault" [=PVE=] mission.* EasterEgg:** In the Borg front mission "State of Q", players can find one of these in the form of the USS ''Enterprise''-D, seen through one of the hull breaches on the USS ''Saratoga''. Also counts as a bit of an anachronism, as the ''Enterprise'' didn't make it to the [[http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Battle_of_Wolf_359 Battle of Wolf 359]] until after the ''Saratoga'' and the rest of the fleet had been destroyed.** In the Foundry editor, a huge number of the premade NPC costumes have funny captions, apparently because whomever originally cataloged them got bored and started making shit up to keep life interesting. The full list is [[http://sto.gamepedia.com/Guide:_The_Foundry/NPC_Contacts here]], but here's a few samples:---> '''Breen Lieutenant Male 01:''' Don't tell the Breen, but this is just a lonely guy who wears the suit to blend in.\\'''Cardassian Commander Male 03:''' His mother named him Kira, after her favorite historical figure. [[WhoNamesTheirKidDude The merciless teasing]] inspired his military career.\\'''Elachi Lieutenant Scanner 01:''' [[ShoutOut EXTERMINATE.]] [[Series/DoctorWho EXTERMINATE.]]** The Jem'Hadar ones are the funniest.* EjectEjectEject: An ability all captains get late in the game, your crew evacuates and the ship blows itself up. May or may not be used when said ship is moments away from destruction.* ElitesAreMoreGlamorous: The Omega Force, a joint Federation/Klingon task force developed to take on the threat of the Borg, generally gives this impression.** Starfleet and the Klingons have this as well in the form of MACO and the Honor Guard, respectively. Both come with fancy armor, weapons, and ship equipment that makes their 'normal' counterparts look pathetic by comparison.* EliteZombie: The Borg have this in the form of the Elite Tactical Drone; almost twice as tall as a normal drone with tons of health as well as an ArmCannon that drains the players' personal shields and does major damage. They can also deliver a backhand capable of knocking down your entire away team.* EpicFail: The [=DOFF=] Assignments have a chance to be failed, especially if you're using Common [=DOFFs=]. What reaches this trope is that some missions actually give you a 100% chance at success (such as delivering captured contraband) and you ''still'' fail at it (as, despite having 100% success, there's still a minuscule chance of failure).* EverythingIsTryingToKillYou: Lampshaded. Upon encountering some hostile ice spiders in a cave during the [[spoiler: Reman Uprising]] arc (not too long after fighting off hostile jackals), one of your officers loudly questions why every new species you encounter always wants to kill you.* EverythingsSquishierWithCephalopods: The Nanovs roaming the Atlai on New Romulus.* EvilIsDeathlyCold: The Breen, complete with HumanPopsicle [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzuUFomZVCI grenades and lasers.]]* EvilCounterpart: The Mirror Universe ships. They look the same, however they have things that are vastly different, usually by rearranging [=BOFF=] slots and Console slots. Prior to that, the Federation's ships were pretty much "swap skins".* EvilSoundsDeep: The voice of the Collective in Borg space missions, coupled with a bit of VoiceOfTheLegion (naturally).* EvilVersusEvil:** The main reason that the Federation and Klingon Empire haven't been all turned into cyberzombies or wiped from creation is that, even decades after the events of ''Voyager'', the Borg and Undine still hate hate '''''hate''''' each other and gleefully rip one another apart at every opportunity (there's even one instance during a mission where the Borg abruptly break off from fighting the player to go after Undine and will totally ignore the player's ship unless fired on). The Federation and Klingons still ally against the Borg despite having a war on in other sectors.** Also, Empress Sela and Praetor Taris. The former has a ''few'' less atrocities to her name, but they're both still pretty unpleasant.* {{Expy}}:** The ''Vesper'' for the ''Excelsior'' Class, and the ''Excalibur'' as a 25th century equivalent to the ''Constitution'' class. Both the original ship classes can also be bought.** Frankly, most of the ship variants count. Each Tier contains: 1) a ship from the TV series, and 2) two more ships that ''look'' different but are basically cosmetic redesigns. This allows the mix-and-match customization, since the warp nacelles, engineering hull, etc are all in the same position, but the cosmetic redesigns themselves are of variable aesthetic quality.** The Unimatrix 0047 Command Ships are easily this towards V'Ger of ''Film/StarTrekTheMotionPicture'', particularly with the metallic guitar riff when it warps in and its OneHitKill plasma torpedo.* ExpansionPack: ''Legacy of Romulus'', which launched in late May 2013. Included the long-awaited Romulan playable faction as well as huge changes to the rest of the game. This was followed by the ''Delta Rising'' expansion in October 2014. In practice they worked just as the previous Season updates (that is, a free and (if you want to play the game) obligatory update to the game that comes with a number of additions to the microtransaction store). It was just a much, ''much'' larger update than any of the previous Seasons, which is why they took to calling it an expansion pack instead.* ExplodingBarrels: Players can find these on the promenade of [=DS9=] in the mission "Boldly They Rode", and can use them to take out some of the Jem'Hadar without having to engage in protracted firefights.* ExplosiveInstrumentation: This ''is'' Star Trek. How else do you duty officers get hurt realigning a sensor array or some of the other tasks that have the possibility of injury? * ExplosiveBreeder[=/=]ExtremeOmnivore: Tribbles. Once per hour, a tribble in your inventory or equipped will eat one food item and produce another type of tribble. There's a huge breeding tree with dozens of varieties, and they can even eat things like ketracel white, which is normally toxic to anyone who isn't a Jem'Hadar.** Although what they eat can be dependent on the breed -- one particular breed, for instance, refuses food items and other consumables, instead favouring ''other tribbles''.* ExtraEyes:** All the wildlife on New Romulus have six eyes, presumably due to mutation caused by long-term exposure to the radiation on the planet's surface.** The Iconians (and their personal guard, the Herald) have this trait as well.* FaceHeelTurn: Expository text in the loading screens reveal [[spoiler: that Worf had severed all ties to the Federation after they declined assisting the Klingons in fighting the Undine/Species 8472.]] [[spoiler:Of course, given that he was worried about Starfleet Command and the Federal Parliament being shot through with Undine infiltrators and was rebuffed after being told it couldn't happen, exactly who ended up the face and who ended up the heel [[GreyAndGreyMorality is a matter of perspective]].]]* FacePalm: One of the emotes you can do is a Picard face palm.* FalseFlagOperation: [[spoiler: The Undine's attack on the Alpha and Beta Quadrant is because of ''someone'' using Iconian tech to mimic Starfleet spaceships and attack Fluidic Space]].** The player is involved in one of these as well; capturing a Vaadwaur ship and sending it to attack the Benthans and Hazari in order to make them see the value of working together against a common enemy.* [[FallingIntoTheCockpit Falling Into The Captain's Chair]]: This is more or less how the Fed side of the game starts out. Your ship is ambushed and boarded, and while you are helping repel the intruders, the senior staff gets killed, and you, a lowly Ensign, now have to take command of an entire starship... [[OhCrap against the Klingons]] [[FromBadToWorse and the Borg.]] The fact you actually ''win'' is why command makes your command position permanent.** Given a BIT more justification in the expanded bio.* FakeDefector: [[spoiler: In the mission "Under the Cover of Night", T'Par is actually a member of Section 31, and capturing her is just part of a ruse to feed the Romulans false information.]]* FanDisservice: The scantily-clad, hideously ugly Fek'lhri Ravagers.* {{Fanservice}}:** Orion Females play this straight, especially the Player Character ones. This also applies to female toons with the Enterprise-Era and TOS-Era Mirror Uniforms.** Special note to Nimbus III's Orion Hideout and Titty Bar, Shangdu. There is fanservice for ANYONE in this nightclub with scantily clad dancers everwhere. This is notable because it's not just the standard hot chick schtick and features as the three main ones a Trill Female in a bikini, a [[UsefulNotes/FurryFandom Caitian Female]] in a [[ZettaiRyouiki tank top and go-go boots]], and a Human ''[[GayOption male]]'' in a speedo. The equality of it was actually praised on the forums - especially when you consider that the primary person watching the male dancer is also male, and has atmospheric lines like, "I think I'm in love".* FantasticGhetto: If you aren't a Klingon noble or a KDF officer, First City isn't that great of a place to live. During a "tour the city" optional mission you find that the southwest side of town is a dingy slum packed full of non-Klingons who came to Qo'noS looking for work and weren't successful.* FasterThanLightTravel: Par for the course. [[EveOnline Thankfully, there is no such thing]] [[NothingIsScarier as a Warp Queue]].** However, [[GameplayAndStorySegregation due to the way FTL travel is actually played]], it's entirely possible to get in a 20 ship pileup in interstellar space...* FantasticRacism: The Octanti hate all Borg. Even if they're Liberated, Borg are Borg. However, a number of Octanti start to reconsider this, especially when they save their skins [[spoiler:and the brother of an Octanti ambassador returns to him.]]* FightingYourFriend: Some of the missions (such as the Starbase 234 patrol mission for Fed players) has the player engaging in 'wargames' against their allies to hone their combat skills. This is also the main premise of the same-faction (Fed vs Fed, KDF vs KDF) PvP missions, where players square off against others from their own faction.* FiveRoundsRapid: Happens to a Romulan security team facing a [[ImplacableMan Vaadwaur Overseer]] on the bridge of the ''Lleiset'' in the mission "Capture the Flag"; the redshirts open up on him with multiple disruptors (which are all hitting him dead-center, by the way) only for their target to [[TheSlowWalk stroll right up to them]] and decimate them all with just his fists.* FixedForwardFacingWeapon:** The various flavors of dual cannons as well as the phaser spinal lance on the Galaxy-X dreadnought have a very narrow firing arc straight ahead of the ship. Dual beam banks and (most) forward-mounted torpedo launchers also count to a lesser degree, as they can only engage targets within a 90-degree cone off the bow. Normal cannons and the Assault Cruiser Refit's Wide-Angle Quantum Torpedo Launcher as well to an even more lesser degree, as they turn a full 180 degrees** Also the thalaron weapon used by the Scimitar dreadnoughts.* {{Flanderization}}: One of the few things we learned about the Breen in ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' is that they wear refrigeration suits because they prefer cold temperatures. The game takes this UpToEleven by making everything about them relate somehow to cold: they use cryonic grenades, encase their prisoners in ice, and somehow scatter snow across the corridors of enemy ships they're boarding. And then there's the IdiosyncraticEpisodeNaming of their story missions, all of which have something to do with cold.* FluffyTamer: The player can become this, with numerous species of animals that can be domesticated and kept as pets, some of which can even be used in combat.* FlunkyBoss: Just about every elite level boss ship you have to kill (and some battleship-level mobs) will have a squadron of escort ships or fighters buzzing around it.** Some high-ranking ground enemies will have the ability to summon low-level grunts as backup.* {{Foreshadowing}}: During the debriefing following the completion of 'Cutting the Cord', Temek and T'nae each tell the KDF & Fed players that "the return of the Iconians could change everything". Cue 'Surface Tension'...* FourStarBadass: The current maximum rank a player can achieve is Fleet Admiral (Federation & Romulan Republic, allowing them to become ''[[UpToEleven five]]''-star badasses) and General (KDF)[[note]]the final KDF promotion is Dahar Master, but that technically is a title rather than a rank[[/note]]. Rather quickly in universe, one would imagine.* FragileSpeedster[=/=]GlassCannon: On paper, the Escort class ships are supposed to be this: Quick and deadly, but light on defense. Player customization and skill determines if that is true or not.** The fighters, runabouts, and shuttlecraft can also also be considered this; small, agile craft good for quick hit and run attacks, but will be slaughtered wholesale by battleships and cruisers that get a clear shot on them.* FriendlyFireproof: Other players and friendly NPC's won't be harmed by a stray phaser beam or torpedo during combat.** Subverted with some of the confuse abilities, which reverses the victim's friend or foe ID systems and renders them vulnerable to attacks from allies.* FungusHumongous: Some ground maps have this in effect to varying degrees, the most notable example being Imaga in "The Doomsday Device".* FunnyBackgroundEvent: In the 20-man FM event ''Starbase Fleet Defense'' the freighters you escort for a full minute make rediculous but easily missed comments ranging from SpaceIsAnOcean to discussing about their romantic encounters with the comm channel over.* FutureMeScaresMe: [[spoiler: Past-B'Vat, complete with TOS Klingon style smooth forehead, is terrified at what he will become in the future, and helps the player in taking down his future self]]* GameplayAndStorySegregation: Of a sort. The Duty Officer system represents your junior officers, and every ship is supposed to have their crew number's worth of Doffs. However, you start at 100 for free, up to a max of 400. However... some ships crew numbers don't fit with this, like the Galaxy with a crew of ''1,000'', or the Defiant with a crew of ''50'', or the Runabout class shuttle, which has a maximum crew compliment of ''5''. Very few ships have Doff numbers close to their crew numbers, while others are either hopelessly understaffed, or unrealistically packed.** The New Romulus story introduced in Season 7 has what one can call Story And Story Segregation: continuity-wise it explicitly takes place after and relies on events in the Romulan arc in the Federation story (for instance, [[spoiler: the disappearance of Sela is the reason for the civil war that is the reason for the New Romulus exodus, while the Tal Shiar's actions are influenced by the loss of Hakeev]]), but there's no restriction on doing the New Romulus missions before even ''beginning'' the Romulan arc.*** This is made worse with the addition of the Klingon storyline. While the Romulan early-game storyline starts a couple of weeks before the Federation early-game and chronicles how New Romulus is created, the Klingon storyline takes place after ''both'' storylines and yet you're ''still'' there dealing with the Tal Shiar long after they were dealt with!** More Story and Story Segregation in the Third Anniversary mission, "Temporal Ambassador". Given that the mission guest-stars Tholians and [[spoiler: 29th Century Starfleet timeships]], the mission ''should'' be set somewhere near the Endgame and post-Endgame content. However, the level restriction for "Temporal Ambassador" is level 6 - Lieutenant rank, a far cry from Endgame. When the mission was shuffled into the post-early-game missions, it's at Level 20 and yet you're still dealing with things that you won't deal with for another 30 levels.* GatlingGood / MoreDakka: One of the options for either yourself or your crew while on foot is essentially the energy-weapon version of a Squad Automatic Weapon. Having one of these around is rather handy. [[VideoGame/StarTrekEliteForce Not the first time we've seen 'em, either.]]* GenreSavvy: During one mission that involved time travel you wind up saving the orignal U.S.S. Enterprise from a ambush that normally they would have survived but was destroyed due to interference. After you do so you immediatly jump out of system to avoid contaiminating the time line. Then at the end while fighting more Klingons the Enterprise jumps in system to help you fight them off. Then Commander Spock sends you a message saying that he's had experience with the Guardian of Forver and recognizes the portal. He then pretty much tells you he understands why you're not talking back and urges you to go back to your time before you cause any damage to the time line.* GettingCrapPastTheRadar:** One of the Duty Officer assignments is 'Retrieve DNA Sample from Romulan Senator', which is easier to accomplish if the officers you assign to it have the 'Seductive' and 'Unscrupulous' traits. Oh ''my''.** An Orion female Entertainer doff you can buy with Diplomacy XP has the following line on her doff card:---> '''Janzea:''' Sit back and relax. Let me do the work.** Thanks to how a race uses naming conventions, [=DOFF=]s can be given unintentionally hilarious names. Included on this group is a Gorn named "Shit", a Reman named "Slut", an aliengen named "Ugly"...* GladiatorGames: [[spoiler: Prominently featured in the Cloaked Intentions episode series.]]** [[spoiler: In one mission on Nimbus III, Hassan throws you and your party into one.]]* GlassCannon: The Escort.* GodSaveUsFromTheQueen: As of season 7, the Borg Queen. Empress Sela as well, to a minor extent.* GrapplingHookPistol: Dev blogs have revealed that players will have access to these in ''Delta Rising''; they will allow players to zipline, rappel, or simply horizontally traverse from one area to another.* GrenadeLauncher: The pulsewave assault rifle available as part of the Klingon Honor Guard and Adapted MACO ground sets have one of these built in. Engineering players can also erect automated grenade-launching turrets.* GrievousHarmWithABody: One of the weapons the player can get is a severed Borg arm cannon, which makes for a form of HoistByHisOwnPetard since it's most often used against other Borg.* GuileHero: You get the chance to be this on occasion, especially during the [[TimeTravel Drozana Station]] missions.* GunsAkimbo: Klingon Swordmasters and other types of enemies often use twin disruptor pistols, but the PlayerCharacter and their BridgeBunnies can too.* GoodOldFisticuffs: Just because you ''have'' a [[RayGun Phaser]], doesn't mean you ''always have to use it''. Far from being an EmergencyWeapon, some enemies just go down faster if the player simply ''holsters their weapon and hands them their ass''. Having the Leg Sweep ability for crowd control makes this even more useful. See also {{BFS}}.* GreenSkinnedSpaceBabe: The Orion Vixens, complete with confuse-inducing Seduce skill. They're also a popular choice amongst the RP community.* GuideDangIt: While not as heavy as most [=MMOs=], [=STO=] does have a handful of prizes that people wouldn't know how to obtain.[[/folder]][[folder:Tropes H-M]]* HandWave: Story-wise, the Tutorial shows that your character is merely an ensign who's ''very first assignment'' out of the academy takes them to the Vega Colony, where the Borg very specifically kill off all the commanding officers on your ship while you transported over to the U.S.S. Khitomer to help them get their ship back up and running. This technically placed you as the highest ranking officer in the chain of command, and Admiral Quinn decides that you have earned the right to remain as captain of your vessel due to the dire situation all around the Alpha Quadrant, and they need every last ship they can use in service. Players are actually given the choice to skip the Tutorial if they want. If they do, they start the game in Starfleet Academy, and have to go see the Commandant of the academy for graduation. He decides that your academics are so admirably remarkable that he recommends you for a command assignment. That's it. He tells you to go grab some supplies from a nearby locker, select a first officer, and get to work.** This has been cleaned up a lot in the new tutorial, introduced in Season 8. The new tutorial has you [[spoiler: on your first assignment as a freshly graduated cadet from the Academy acting as First Officer. After the Captain is killed in a Klingon ambush, you receive a field promotion to Lieutenant from another Starfleet Captain. You then get caught up in the initial stages of the Borg invasion. Your actions in evacuating the survivors of the Vega Colony prompt Admiral Quinn to make the promotion official.]]** Undine ships are normally piloted by a single Undine with a strong psychic connection to their vessel. Since no other species can replicate this, captured Undine ships require a traditional crew, thus allowing game mechanics involving crew to function the same as with other ships.* HardLight: The player encounters several walkways made of this in Facility 4028. The various forcefields seen in different missions, as well as the [[DeflectorShields hields]] used by player-characters and ships could also count.** The various holograms can also fall into this category.* HealthDamageAsymmetry: The absolute maximum hitpoints a player ship can have is roughly in the 60k range, however boss ships on elite difficulty have hundreds of thousands to millions of hitpoints. In a subversion, these boss ships often have OneHitKill weapons that have to be avoided rather than tanked. Player ships can do some serious damage too, but nothing that can solo kill a boss in one or two hits.* HeelFaceTurn: [[spoiler: The Remans, and particularly Obisek, who starts off stealing thalaron weapons and siccing fighters on you.]]* HellBentForLeather: Even in the 25th century, the typical Klingon military uniform still looks like something you'd expect to see members of {{Music/KISS}} wearing.* HeroicSacrifice:** [[spoiler: K'Valk does a suicide run into the core of the Doomsday Machine to at least try to disable it. And he does it while singing the Klingon War Song.]]** [[spoiler: Admiral D'Vak nearly does one too; sacrificing his ship to draw fire from insanely powerful Borg weapons. [[SuicidalGotcha He survives, though]].]]* HistoricalRapSheet: For a purely fictional example, the player discovers partway through the Starfleet "Romulan Mystery" and Romulan "In Shadows" arcs that the Tal Shiar faction led by Hakeev and Taris [[spoiler:triggered the Hobus supernova and the destruction of Romulus]].* HitAndRunTactics: Ships with Battle Cloak can pull this off, go in, fight, and quickly cloak while in Red Alert and GTFO. The Enhanced Battle Cloak-equipped ships can go even further and torpedo away while hidden.* HoistByHisOwnPetard: The game has this in spades, as there's countless examples of players being able to acquire other factions' weapons, ships, even people and turning them against their original owners. Some missions even have players sabotaging enemy defense systems to attack the enemy on the player's behalf.* HolographicTerminal: Starfleet absolutely loves this trope; first seen on Memory Alpha and the bridge of the ''Enterprise''-F, it was later added to Federation fleet starbases and the revamped Earth Spacedock in Season 9. The Klingons and Romulans have this as well, but not nearly as much.* HumansAreLeaders: The only race with the Leadership skill, which increases subsystem repair and hull regeneration. An entire crew of purple quality Human bridge officers lead by a Human captain will have a very fast regeneration rate and recover from subsystem attacks that temporarily knock them out such as Target Subsystem: Engines.* HumansAreWhite: There's one black guy[[labelnote:*]]Captain Jay Yim of the USS ''Khitomer''[[/labelnote]] and maybe three Asians on the entire Federation side[[labelnote:*]]one of them being Lt. Kirayoshi O'Brien, who takes after his Irish father[[/labelnote]], and the rest of the {{NPC}}s are 99% white or white [[RubberForeheadAliens near-human aliens]].[[labelnote:*]]The exceptions being Rear Admiral Tuvok, Admiral T'nae (brown-skinned Vulcan), and LCDR. Tem Inasi (chocolate-skinned Bajoran).[[/labelnote]] The game's effective mascot, [[FanNickname "Handsome Phaser Guy"]], is likewise a Caucasian male. However, CharacterCustomization and the Foundry editor allow players and authors to avert this at will.** The devs are trying to correct it. Captain Koren of the I.K.S. Bortasqu' and Worf's adoptive daughter is very black and even has an african american voice actor. There's also Commander Mesi Achebe (AmbiguouslyBrown) as well as several racially diverse Foundry contact [=NPC=]s hanging out on Social Zones like Commander Futagami or Captain Ford. Also the art team found time to introduce new racial face options for Season 9 (including a new asian face, an eastern european and an african based one). Based on the game's legendary TroubledProduction, its really a DownplayedTrope.* HumiliationConga: [[spoiler:Hakeev]] gets put through one once his plans start falling apart. As the AnticlimaxBoss entry notes, ''it doesn't even end with his death''.* HumongousMecha: The Voth have some rather formidable mechs that they employ in ground combat which can be rather difficult to defeat without a concerted effort from a team of players and supporting bridge officers.** Also the Elachi walkers used in their invasions of various colony worlds in the Romulan Republic story missions and the Rhi Atmosphere PVE, which are a rather blatant shout-out to the Martian tripods from ''Literature/TheWarOfTheWorlds''.* HurricaneOfPuns: ''[[CrowningMomentOfFunny The Tribble With Klingons]]'', Which gives us such gems as: [[spoiler: Whack-A-Tribble, Tribble Savior, Tribble Topia, etc.]] Be warned, this has undergone ''rapid'' MemeticMutation in the player base.** The KDF has a lot of this. One of the Klingon PlayerVersusEnvironment missions is called [[IncrediblyLamePun "Sulfur My Wrath."]] Players collectively groaned upon seeing it.** The introductions given to each group of opponents in Hassan's fighting pit on Nimbus III are pretty bad as well.* HyperactiveMetabolism: we will have this trope in the future.* IAmNotLeftHanded: It's easy to play this up with certain ships as they tend to have consoles that many players tend to consider useless and try to dump in order to raise their DPS.* IHaveAFamily:** The Republic prisoner on Hakeev's ship says this as [[spoiler: the brainwashed player]] is about to [[MalevolentMutilation forcibly install Borg implants into them]] without anesthesia. It doesn't do them any good.** Va'kel Shon uses this as his excuse for not helping Romulan and [=KDF=] players get past the Tholian guard in "Temporal Ambassador".* IJustWantToBeNormal: Poor Miral Paris. She hates the fact that she is considered the Klingon Messiah. She just wants to be the head of security on the U.S.S. Kirk. [[spoiler: Even worse is that the Guardian of Forever confirms the fact that she is the Kuvah'magh.]]* IdiosyncraticEpisodeNaming: All five missions of the "Breen Invasion" episode include the word "cold" in the title, referring to the planet Breen being [[SingleBiomePlanet very, very wintry]].* InfinityMinusOneSword: Many C-Store ships that come with special weapons usually bear the "Infinity" symbol and come with special modifiers that other weapons don't. What makes them Minus One Swords is that they only really scale up to about Mk XI.* ImplacableMan: If you don't have a frequency remodulator device, Borg drones can easily become this once they adapt to your weapons. The only way to stop them then is to engage them in melee combat, where you risk possibly being assimilated.* ImprobableWeaponUser: The Gorn equivalent of the [[DemonicSpiders Klingon Swordmaster]] likes to grab a chunk of the ground and throw it at you. Yes, even on a space ship/space station.** Orbital Strike for Engineer captains. It doesn't matter where you are--on the surface, underground, on another Federation starship, ''even back in time.''* InGameNovel: ''[[http://sto.gamepedia.com/Accolade/Lore The Path to 2409]]'', a 29-volume text which tells the major historical events between the end of ''Film/StarTrekNemesis'' in 2379 and the game's beginning in 2409.* InSpaceEveryoneCanSeeYourFace: While most of the environmental suits and helmet-bearing elite armor sets in the game avert this, it's played straight with D'Tan and a Romulan scientist accompanying him in the cutscene at the end of the last Romulan reputation mission.* InsurmountableWaistHeightFence: There is one very prominent example on the Starfleet Academy map. Your character is not able to access the waterfront, even though there's only a literal waist-heigth fence in your way - one that you could jump over under normal circumstances. Many other maps (including player-created Foundry stories) use noticable [[InvisibleWall Invisible Walls]]. Those are most prominent around the edges of maps, where your character suddenly can't go any further for no apparent reason, although in some maps (e.g. some of the Borg ones), there are energy fields acting as these.* [[InfinityMinusOneSword Infinity -1 Ship]]: The Breen and Risan ships. Both have the console numbering of the Fleet ships, are free to Upgrade to T5-U (if applicable), only requires a time investment (usually no more than 10 minutes tops) a day to get what you need to unlock them and once you unlock one, all you need is just a day's run through your other characters to get the rest.* [[InfinityPlusOneSword Infinity +1 Ship]]: The Fleet, Lockbox and Lobi ships. All three are top of the line ships: high hull strength, high shield modifier, usually a superior Bridge Officer layout and their upgrades makes them even stronger. However, getting Fleet ships means being ''in'' a Fleet and getting to the Level required to unlock that certain ship. Lockbox and Lobi ships are even worse as they require an insane amount of money, either real life cash or EC.* InterchangeableAntimatterKey: The game features periodically changing "Lock Boxes" containing random items that need to be unlocked using a "Master Key," which costs 125 Zen (or 1125 Zen for a pack of 10 keys) and is consumed in the process. The lock boxes themselves drop frequently enough that, unless you use real money or sell/discard the boxes, you're likely to have ''way'' more of them than keys.* InterfaceScrew: Some missions will require you to hide your ship inside a nebula. Inside these nebulae, static interference will obstruct your entire view of everything on the screen save for the UI itself. Your map will also be obstructed by static as well. ** Getting assimilated by the Borg during ground missions will also implement a fisheye lens-type effect on the camera that lasts until your character is defeated.** Being critically low on health in ground combat will cause the screen to grey out.** Having your ship boarded by an enemy in space combat will cause the edges of the screen to flash red until the effects of the boarding parties have expired or been neutralized.* InterfaceSpoiler: ** In a mission where you've secretly been in a Holo-Deck the entire time, your away mission's map shows a yellow grid pattern.** An early Romulan mission involves checking three systems -- Dewa, Gamma Eridon and Galorndon Core -- to see which is the most suitable for colonization to become 'New Romulus'. Thing is, Dewa's name on the sector map was once Dewa III/''New Romulus''. This was later updated so that the sector name lacks the reference to New Romulus until some time ''after'' said mission.* AnInteriorDesignerIsYou: Sort of; you get to choose what kind of bridge your ship has, and you can now [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5CZZ3M2pbk&hd=1 run around your ship's interior]]. Cryptic has stated outright that they want to expand greatly upon this and eventually give you full control of your ship's interior and possibly even a starbase for player-made fleets.** You also get to design the ''exterior'' of your ship from several options for each major ship section, natch. It took them a while to add Klingon options, however.** Starbases have finally been added, which allow for ''very'' limited customization of both exteriors and interiors.** Also, the Foundary allows for the creation of custom missions, as well as custom mission maps, including indoor, outdoor and outer space mission arenas.* ISOStandardHumanSpaceship: The ''Avenger''-class battlecruiser is an ISO Standard riff on the usual Starfleet "flying spoon" design, a blocky, beefy, compact cruiser.* ItemCrafting:** The system has gone through several iterations and is slated for updates including [[Series/StarTrekVoyager craftable Delta Flyers.]]** Craftable Delta Flyers have now been removed and are only available through the C-Store.** This is the only place to obtain the Aegis Space Gear for your ship. Thankfully, it's sellable on the Exchange for those who don't want to work for it.* JackOfAllTrades: A few starships tend to lean towards this pattern. This is easily shown with Lobi-bought Tal Shiar Adapted Battle Cruiser and the Jem'Hadar Dreadnought Carrier, as both are heavily armored and shielded ships who can utilize systems that can weaken an opponent in some way while dishing out punishment while losing out on certain things that would make them a GameBreaker* JackOfAllStats: The Fleet Support Cruiser Retrofit. Not as strong as the Fleet Exploration Cruiser Retrofit, not as powerful as the Fleet Assault Cruiser Refit, not as maneuverable as the Fleet Advanced Heavy Cruiser, but will get you through things in a pinch. In fact, many players opted to keep this instead of going to the equally laid out Guardian Cruiser.* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: While rescuing a Federation ship from a Borg sphere, Q, for seemingly no reason than his own amusement, will get involved and start resetting time, forcing you to rescue the ship against increasingly desperate odds. [[spoiler: However, after the third go, he'll then send you and your away team back in time to the battle of Wolf 359, on board the Saratoga, where he reveals the Iconians have opened a small rift, letting a handful of Borg on board, where they will proceed to kill or assimilate Ben Sisko, and throw the entire future into chaos, unless you stop them. After clearing the ship, Q will admit he's moderately impressed, and will helpfully stop time, giving you a chance to get ready for the boss fight (which you ''will'' need).]] He can be an epic jerk about it, but Q seems to be looking out for the human race, and at least giving them a fighting chance against the Iconians' more cosmic level shenanigans.* KickTheDog: [[spoiler:Gaul]] does this by [[spoiler:shooting a Talaxian cook]]. In fact he had a complex plan to make certain there would be that dog to kick, that the player would be there to see the kick and that it would be the most senseless kick manageable in the whole Quadrant. When it fails to cause the right reaction from [[spoiler: Neelix]], he proceeds to stomp on the whole litter just to drive home that he is Evil.* KillAndReplace: Standard M.O. of Undine infiltrators. On three separate occasions in-game they've replaced members of Starfleet or the Federation diplomatic corps, and the Gorn Hegemony leadership in the backstory was infested with them. The infiltration problem was discovered when they tried it on Ja'rod, son of Torg, but [[UnderestimatingBadassery underestimated his badassery]].* KillItWithFire: Some weapons, particularly plasma-based weapons, will often set targets ablaze when they hit an enemy. Applies to both ground and ship-based versions.** The 'four spectres' the player fights in Gre'thor and Fek'Ihr himself will also use this trope to devastating effect. Get caught in the area of one of their flame attacks and you can pretty much kiss your ass goodbye.** The fighting pit in Hassan's Shangdu hideout on Nimbus III features trapdoors that drop anyone (player or NPC) unlucky enough to tread on them into flames which are immediate death.* KilledMidSentence:** [[spoiler: Thot Trel During the Breen arc.]] -->[[spoiler: '''Thot Trel''': "...But... I'm... Thot... Tr..."]]** Also happens to a Vaadwaur {{Mook}} in "Capture the Flag"--> '''Vaadwaur soldier''': "Your ship is do--" *incinerated by plasma** KineticWeaponsAreJustBetter: Played with. Torpedoes are far and away the most damaging weapons in your starship's arsenal, but they kind of suck against shields. That's where [[EnergyWeapons phasers and disruptors]] come in. On the ground, meanwhile, melee weapons have the advantage of ignoring shields and Borg adaptation, guaranteeing a steady damage output if you're willing to risk your skin up close. The TR-116 rifle is a good example of this. While it's only a Mk I level weapon, it can penetrate shields and be shot around corners thanks to that mini-transporter. It can be killer in PVP if used right and very effective against the Borg. The only issue is that they were only available via pre-order from Target and [[ScrewedByTheLawyers the contract has prevented them from making it in-game via rep system or drop.]] That all changed when the transporterless TR-116B became available in the crafting system.* KlingonPromotion: Not only does the game implement this in the [=KDF=] tutorial missions as the main way a lowly Warrior gains command of an entire starship, but fleets (the in-game "guilds") can also implement a non-violent version of this when leaders have been negligent in their duties; if the fleet leader has been inactive for a set period of time (usually several months), junior members can usurp control of the fleet from them.* KlingonScientistsGetNoRespect:** So much so that the Klingons don't actually have dedicated Science Vessels. Instead, they have Birds-Of-Prey, small, ultra-manoeuverable ships that have universal Bridge Officer slots which can be assigned any type rather than being limited to one.** Then again, their Carriers have similar capabilities to Science Vessels (less weapons, increased shields, extra Science stations, Auxiliary Power bonus...).* KnightOfCerebus: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlZzP61VDZY "So you are the heroes of the Milky Way. You have come further than we expected, but still you chase our shadows. We give you a single warning. Do not attract our attention again."]] Although the playerbase complained about the CutsceneIncompetence of roughly everyone else present, all of whom were armed, in not vaporizing the Iconian on the spot while xe was monologuing.* KnockBack: There are tons of different weapons and attacks that deal this out, both on the ground and even in space. Hell, some types of personal shields your Captain and away team members can wear have the ability to deal this out to anyone attacking them. Romulan warbirds even do this to other ships hit by the PlanarShockwave of their singularity cores exploding when they're defeated.* LadyNotAppearingInThisGame:** Some of the promo art features a [[http://images-cdn.perfectworld.com/www/pictures/1353959785786.jpg young female Vulcan]] wearing a Starfleet-styled CustomUniformOfSexy with plentiful cleavage. She's been dubbed T'Its and variations thereof [[FanNickname by the fanbase]][[note]]Canonically, most Vulcan feminine names are "T'[something]"[[/note]]. On the other hand, when the ExpansionPack ''Legacy of Romulus'' was dropped, another Romulan showed up in the promo wallpapers, dubbed "So'Hott" by the players. According to WordOfGod this is meant to be Commander Tiaru Jarok, the captain of the Romulan Republic flagship RRW ''Lleiset'' (the Romulan counterpart to the ''Enterprise''). She becomes a {{Recurrer}} starting with the Season 8 teaser mission "Sphere of Influence" but wasn't in the game until that mission was released.** Promo art for the second expansion ''Delta Rising'' played this straight again. [[http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/startrek/images/4/49/Delta_Rising_3_caps.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20150118000517 This wallpaper]] features a hot female Romulan in a SpyCatsuit, a hot blonde Liberated Borg Starfleet officer in tactical greys, [[TheLastOfTheseIsNotLikeTheOthers and a big, burly Klingon with a bat'leth]]. Though the Romulan at least bears some resemblance to Commander Mena, the Romulan mission giver for much of ''DR'''s storyline.* LampshadeHanging: You get an accolade for scanning an anomaly inside the Bajoran wormhole. Its title? "Isn't This All One Big Anomaly?"* LargeAndInCharge:** The more important the Breen, the bigger they are. [[{{Mooks}} H'ren]] are a bit shorter than humans, senior officers are OneHeadTaller, and [[BigBad Thot Trel]] is an absolute colossus.** Exaggerated further with the Fek'lhri, who range from the wast-high Hordelings to the Slave Masters, who are twice your height... and the Horde's senior leadership are even bigger than that.** The Gorn seem to be fond of this as well; low-level grunts look like anemic midgets compared to their superiors. One could be forgiven for mistaking a high-level Gorn officer for a ''T. rex'' or Franchise/{{Godzilla}}.** Kar'ukan, the leader of the Jem'Hadar near the end of the Dominion storyline, is twice as big as the other Jem'Hadar under his command.** The Tholians employ this to some degree as well, most noticeably when wearing environmental suits; Ensigns are roughly human-sized, whereas the Captains are almost twice as big!** You, as the player can play this straight or even invert it, especially in the case of the "Alien" subclass. It's not unusual to see players running around 3 or 4 feet tall.** Also applies to NPC starships too; you have dinky little frigates at one end, then massive, hulking dreadnoughts at the other which are considered to be capitol ships and/or flagships for their respective factions.* LargeHam: Colonel Hakeev of the Tal Shiar. To such a degree that [[{{Narm}} he can be hard to take entirely seriously]]. For instance at Khitomer: "I don't care if you have a hundred Klingon ships. You will NOT stop me." And then there is his BigNo at the end of the Coliseum episode. Coming at the end of a rather hammy monologue as it does. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhzDY9r8VvE]] TropesAreNotBad, though, as his hamminess is about the only thing adding some levity to what is otherwise [[DarkerAndEdgier a VERY grimdark storyline]] compared to the other two factions'.* LaserBlade: Yes, in ''Franchise/StarTrek''. There are Nanopulse Lirpas and Bat'leths (which is by the way based in an ACTUAL canon technobabble) which give off the glow full time. The one that is kinda controversial is the new Tholian Energy Sword which harnesses energy shot at it's wielder and converts it into an energy blade that reflects incoming fire like a lightsaber. the controversy comes from the fact it's so blatant about it and being an AssPull of tech. It's still moderately popular simply because of the trope though.* TheLegionsOfHell: The Fek'lhri are a ''space-faring'' version of this. They are malicious souls of the damned. Spirits sent to Gre'thor, the Klingon version of Hell. The Klingons have a story arc where you and your crew are sent down to Gre'thor itself, where you must find why and how the Fek'Ihri reappeared. Along your travels you will fight, among other demons, the physical personifications of Treachery, Cowardice, and Dishonor, then finally Molor and Fek'Ihr, something like the Klingon versions of Asmodeus and the Devil. [[spoiler:Possibly subverted: Your science officer suggests after the fact that the battle in Gre'thor may have been AllJustADream and that the Fek'Ihri were created by biotech, possibly by the Hur'q. [[AbortedArc Nothing ever comes of this.]]]]* LetsGetDangerous: When [[spoiler:an Iconian shows up at the end of ''Surface Tension'' and casually kills the Klingon High Council, Admiral Quinn points out that they are the reason they should stop this pointless war and work together. Which formally ends the Federation/Klingon War.]]* LetsYouAndHimFight: In episode "Allies", mission "Memory Lane", the Tal Shiar leak false information to try and get the Romulan PC and an RRF captain allied with the opposite faction to take each other out. This fails, but not before the Romulan PC kills several of the other captain's squads.* LevelEditor: The "Foundry" content creation toolset. Even in its initial "beta"-ish release state (as Cryptic calls it), it's quite robust and will only get moreso, and will likely allow STO to carve out a very solid niche for itself. Missions by top authors are often favorably compared to canon TV episodes. See Recap.StarTrekOnline for work pages on some of the missions.* LevelScaling: In order to maintain some of the challenge, all instances that the player enters into will feature enemies that scale up to your level. This also helps please the fanbase by maintaining that the Klingons, the Orion Syndicate, the Gorn, and all the other races you engage in the low level story arcs are still a viable threat against you at level 50[[note]]and that while an assault cruiser (e.g. Sovereign class) is still clearly significantly more powerful than a light cruiser (e.g. Centaur class), it is not by several orders of magnitude as happens when comparing two players with a 40-level difference[[/note]]. Public areas like space conflicts still scale the enemies to their appropriate levels, making it very easy to destroy entire Klingon armadas with only a few phaser shots to drop the shields and a torpedo to finish off the ship.* LightningBruiser: The Escort class ships. Once you learn and train your tactical officers with the Cannon Rapid Fire ability, you will tear almost any ship's shields to shreds faster than they have time to turn around and start fighting back. Add torpedoes into that mix and they'll be dead in seconds. Defense can be easily enhanced through shielding and skill distribution into science or engineering skills.* LizardFolk: The Gorn, Saurians and Voth.* LoadsAndLoadsOfLoading: One of the few nearly-universal complaints about the game is that due to the way sector space, solar systems and human-scale stuff is divided, you have to transition between loading screens a ''lot''. Admittedly, because of the way they go from environment to environment in the ''shows'' so quickly, there wasn't all that much of a way of escaping scene changes, but on older machines or lower-quality connections the load times can hurt.* LowerDeckEpisode: Played with. You are, of course, TheCaptain, so it wouldn't make sense for you to be deeply involved in one of these. However, the game does offer "[[RedshirtArmy Duty Officers]]," who are semi-randomly generate and whom you can ''send'' on Lower Deck Missions, bringing back small amounts of EXP, EC, dilithium and "Commendation Experience," a second set of levels which give you some new abilities. What's interesting is that [[FanNickname Doffs]] themselves are SeriousBusiness. The cheapest Bridge Officers, the {{NPC}}s that form your [[FiveManBand away team]], start at like 100 EC at the exchange. The cheapest Duty Officers start at ''30K''.* {{Machinima}}: The ''"The Veil Of Space"'' trailers.* MacrossMissileMassacre:** The "High Yield Torpedo" abilities allow a single launcher to fire 2, 3, or 4 torpedoes at a single target, but the prize goes to the "Torpedo Spread" ability that fires 3 (reduced damage) torpedoes each at up to 3 targets (9 total) at lowest level moving up to a theoretical maximum of 9 torpedoes each at up to 9 targets (that's up to '''81''' total) from a single launcher at the top end.** The Borg command ship from the sector invasion events love to use Torpedo Spread on the players. For a ship of it's size, from the player's perspective, it looks like you're getting hit point blank with buckshot from a shotgun. Say goodbye to your shields and 90% of your hull from the initial impact.** Plasma Torpedoes launcher don't fire more than torpedo at High Yield (it gets modified into a slower, destructible, but ''much'' more damaging torpedo instead), but the Romulan Hyper-Plasma Torpedo fires three High Yield torpedoes ''as the default mode''. Torpedo Spread doesn't have quite the impact it does on other torpedoes (it goes from 2 torpedoes per three targets to 2 torpedoes per 5 targets), but on the other hand, 10 torpedoes ''is'' pretty impressive for a single attack by a single ship.** The Breen Transphasic Torpedoes have this in spades. The normal ones fire two or three at once, with a normal shot, but when the Torpedo Spread ability is used in tandem with it, it is a real massacre. And then there's the Transphasic CLUSTER Torpedo launcher, this baby fires a single slow torpedo. When that torpedo gets close enough to its target; it instantly splits into TEN mines. What's more those mines don't have the delay that the normal ones have. The only thing that ballences this weapon is its 60 second recharge time, and the fact that the torpedo is all but useless if it hits strong sheilds. However, if these babies hit a target with a downed facing shield; well, the target will fall way below 25% in health even if it was at 100% before the torpedo blew it all to heck. * TheManBehindTheMan: [[spoiler:The Iconians, architects of '''all''' the strife sweeping the galaxy. All it took was one Iconian Portal to literally walk into Fluidic Space and mess around with the Undine, a race who simply wants to be ''left alone'', enough times to get them to do all the rest of the work.]]** On a smaller scale, this trope applies to the Romulan Empire. While Empress Sela does in her own right hold a great deal of authority and power, [[spoiler: The Tal Shiar have always had their own agenda and goals of operation. They work under their own masters, and don't recognize Sela as the true ruler of the empire.]]* ManipulativeBastard: This is the [[spoiler: Iconians']] [[PlanetOfHats Hat.]] They're responsible for starting ''EVERYTHING'' that has happened. ''Everything.''* MaybeMagicMaybeMundane: During the invasion of Klingon space by [[TheLegionsOfHell the Fek'lhri]], nobody is quite sure whether they're up against demons or artificial constructs. [[spoiler:It may be a bit of both.]]* MeaningfulName: The R.R.W. Lleiset, to anyone who knows Rhihannsu. ''[[spoiler: Romulan Republic Warbird Freedom]].''* MeaningfulRename: Sort of. [[spoiler:While they didn't "choose" to rename themselves, the proper name for the Undine makes sense [[CaptainObvious given that they come from "fluidic" space]], and nearly all references to "8472" in-game are replaced with the new name.]]* MediumAwareness: During "The State of Q", Q himself will speak through the yellow text message pop up on screen that says "Intense, isn't it?" These yellow messages are typically reserved for system notices such as when you receive a reward for completing quests, goals, duty officer assignments, and such.* MegatonPunch / TouchOfDeath: It's possible (though very rare) to ''disintegrate'' enemy [=NPC=]s or other players with [[GoodOldFisticuffs hand-to-hand]] criticals.* MeleeATrois:** The mission "Skirmish" opens up with one of these between Starfleet, the KDF, and the True Way.** Upon arrival at the [[spoiler: Preserver]] outpost world, the player finds several Breen and Jem'Hadar ships fighting for control of whatever's on the surface. The player's crewmates encourage them to attack while both are distracted.** On a macro scale, the conflict between the Voth, the Alpha Quadrant powers, and the Borg, shown in Dyson Reputation cutscenes and spoken of in the dev blogs. The Voth are fighting the Borg in their home space, as is the Alpha Quadrant, but the Voth are fighting the Alpha Quadrant for control of the Dyson spheres.** "A Step Between Stars" is initially just between the Voth and the Dyson alliance. [[spoiler:Then the Undine blast their way into the Jenolan Dyson sphere and wipe out what's left of the Voth fleet before engaging the Dyson alliance.]]** In ''Delta Rising'''s "Borg Disconnected" STF, what starts as an effort to rescue Borg drones liberated after "Hive: Onslaught" from re-assimilation turns into a Mêlée à ''Quatre'' between the players and Borg Cooperative, the Borg Collective, the Undine, and the Voth.* MemeticBadass: In universe. The player fully achieves this status, complete with random Starfleet [=NPC=]s fawning over the player's character... ''as early as the first moment you arrive at Earth spacedock.'' [[JustifiedTrope Justified]], in that...oh hell, just ''read this page from top to bottom''. Don't even ''bother'' looking behind the spoilers.* {{Metagame}}: Like many games, it has this. This goes double for the Special Task Force PVE missions. The game's PowerCreep shot this to hell until ''Delta Rising'' arrived, forcing this back and angering players, who failed these missions because they couldn't just faceroll and blow everything up instantly.* MightyGlacier:** One way to play the cruiser allows significant toughness (though less than the all-out defense build) while maintaining a pretty dangerous offense. You're still slow and won't turn for anything, but when you shoot (especially broadside) - the enemy WILL feel it.** The various Carriers. With the exception of the Heavy Escort Carrier, Kar'Fi Battle Carrier and the Ar'Kif Retrofit, Carriers are massive battleships with incredibly high HP and shield levels and able to host a plethora of ships (the Vo'quv and the Jem'Hadar Dreadnought take exceptional mention as they're the only ships that launch actual ''ships'', not shuttles)* MiniMecha: Voth "exosuits", higher-level creatures that act as mini-bosses in Season 8's Ground Battlezone, and are about three times the height of the average player character. They're stylized like fat dinosaurs and have {{Arm Cannon}}s, mortars, and a barrier field that shoves players backwards.* MildlyMilitary:** As ever for Starfleet. In fact, you can customize the uniform on your captain and on each bridge officer - while they'll still be Starfleet uniforms, they don't even have to ''match''. With TOS, TNG, ''Deep Space Nine'', the various films, and even ''mirror universe'' uniforms available, they don't even have to have the "new" look.** Averted with regards to the M.A.C.O. marines, who are definitely NOT MildlyMilitary. The player gets away with the multiple uniforms at higher levels despite being one because they're primarily Starfleet with a dual commission. The STO tie-in novel ''Literature/TheNeedsOfTheMany'' actually shows what being a M.A.C.O. is like and they sounds like any marine you've met in real life. Their uniform doesn't change much, it's based on what Mark equipment your using and how good you are.* MilitaryBrat: [=NPC=]s in Starfleet include the children, grandchildren, or other descendants of Hikaru Sulu, Mira Romaine, Miles O'Brian, Tom Paris and B'Elanna Torres, and Samantha Wildman. (The latter two were born aboard ''Voyager'' during that series' run.) Civilian descendants include those of Harry Mudd and Cyrano Jones.* MissingTrailerScene: The game suffers from this occasionally, as some content seen in trailers for the various seasons is either changed or outright removed from the actual version, such as a scene from the season 6 trailer showing players in EV suits fighting Tholians onboard a damaged starship.* MoleInCharge:** [[spoiler:Undine seem to be good at this, given how the ''entire Klingon Empire'' is at war with the Federation because of them.]] ** At least two missions ([[spoiler:"Diplomatic Orders" and "Divide et Impera"]]) have you escorting someone who turns out to be an [[spoiler:Undine]] imposter.* MookMaker:** [[GoddamnedBats Klingon Targ Handlers]] will spawn an endless legion of creatures to attack you until you take them down. On the other side of the neutral zone, Tactical Player Captains can summon a two man team of NPC redshirts from their ship to fight for them every two minutes. [[RedshirtArmy But if you combine that with the Tactical Initiative skill]], [[ZergRush which instantly recharges all of your abilities...]]** Carriers are this mechanically, since the only {{cap}} on how many fighters you or the AI can launch is on how many birds you can have in the air at any given time.* MoreDakka: Whereas Cruisers are more into BeamSpam, Escorts' ability to equip considerable numbers of rapid-firing cannons puts them into this trope instead. Especially since most cannon-related abilities involve increasing their rate of fire ''even further''. The current king of dakka is the Federation's Andorian-designed ''Kumari''-class escort, a pure GlassCannon with an AlphaStrike that looks like something out of a BulletHell game.* MovesetClone: The Starfleet ''Avenger''-class and Klingon ''Mogh''-class battlecruisers have the same bridge officer layout, virtually identical stats, and very similar unique consoles that act as RecursiveAmmo weapons. Their primary difference is that the ''Mogh'' has a built-in cloaking device, whereas the ''Avenger'' has to use the cloak console add-on. {{Justified|Trope}} as the ''Avenger'' having been based off of stolen plans for Klingon battlecruisers, and the ''Mogh'' being based in turn on the ''Avenger''.* MundaneUtility: One duty officer mission has you sabotage a provisions stockpile of the KDF. Do you destroy the food or poison it? Nope you just beam over about three tribbles and let them do it for you.* MyGreatestSecondChance: In the Klingon mission "Afterlife", you'll find First Officer Doran, who was slain in the Klingon Tutorial Mission. You find out that her death was a one way ticket to Gre'thor, Klingon Hell. Your player convinces her to team up with her husband and give her a clean slate so she can go to Sto-vo-kor, Klingon Heaven.* MyNameIsNotDurwood: A fairly common misspelling of "Ferasan" is "Ferasian". This may be due to their CaptainErsatz status which causes [[TheyJustDidntCare players to not care about them as much.]][[/folder]][[folder:Tropes N-R]]* NegativeSpaceWedgie: Standard fare for Star Trek, but the higher tier Romulan Warbirds have the short range Singularity Jump ability which takes you out of the path of enemy weapons and, if close enough, leaves a miniature black hole for them to deal with.* NiceJobBreakingItHero:** Combined with a bit of Fridge Brilliance. [[spoiler: You manage to defeat B'vat, and save Miral, after entering the Guardian of Forever. The Klingons got the genetic samples they needed from her to cure the Augment Virus, however, and you don't stop them from using it, which means, uh, that ''you'' are responsible for the Klingons getting their ridges and infamous over-aggression back, just like B'vat wanted, and it means that you are indirectly responsible for the Fed-Klink war in the 25th century. [[YouCantFightFate And since you come from a time when Klingons have ridges and are incredibly warlike]], [[MindScrew you were always destined to do so]]. [[Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine Temporal Investigations]] is gonna love this one.]]** Played ''far'' more straight in "Divide et Impera", an early Romulan-centric story mission: [[spoiler:you infiltrate a Romulan starbase and slaughter everyone there under the orders from the Admiral accompanying you, while looking for subspace tear weapons (think ''Film/StarTrekInsurrection''). However, you discover that the Romulans weren't working on such weapons... they were working on methods of finding Undine infiltrators. And the admiral, surprise, ''is'' an Undine, who uses the genetic data of the commander of the base to assume her identity and escape into Romulan space, tricking the Romulans into thinking that it's their foremost expert on finding shapeshifters. So you wrecked up the Alpha Quadrant's best hope of finding Undine infiltrators and put a dangerous one right into the heart of the Romulan Empire. Stonking great job, cap'n.]]*** This is made even worse in that [[spoiler:you have no option to question the "Admiral" or your orders the way Picard and Riker did in the TNG episode "The Pegasus" and you are [[StupidityIsTheOnlyOption literally forced by the mission design]] to carry the IdiotBall when many players could easily tell something's not quite right about the situation (as pointed out by your officers repeatedly through it). The only way to avoid being [[StupidityIsTheOnlyOption forced into said stupidity]] is to choose never to do the mission (or drop it partway through) and miss out on the reward. How easy it would have been for you to expose the Undine plot by refusing to kill any more Romulans after gathering enough evidence, and watching the thwarted Undine still sabotage the Romulans' research and escape.]]* NiceJobFixingItVillain:** Hakeev blows it big time in "Turning Point". He tries to frame the Republic for bombing the conference on Khitomer to make them look untrustworthy. Unfortunately, he's caught redhanded by the Romulan PC and Captain Ja'rod, and then [[spoiler:Commander Temer [[JumpingOnAGrenade throws himself on the last bomb]] to save Ambassador Woldan]], making the EvilPlan completely backfire.** [[spoiler:Cooper in "Surface Tension". The Federation, the Klingon Empire, and the Romulan Republic have made a tenuous alliance against the Borg, the Iconians, the Undine, and similar threats--all while the Klingon and Federation are still technically in a state of war. The alliance is about to fall apart violently over who owns the Jenolan Dyson Sphere... and then the Undine, led by Cooper, launch an attack that leads to the Federation, Klingon, and Romulan flagships defending first Earth, then Qo'noS from the Undine. Which instantly leads to a cease fire between both sides and a continuation of the alliance as if no squabble ever happened.]]* NoodleIncident: This line from Neelix in "All That Glitters":--> '''Neelix''': "And so we agreed never to mention it again. At least, not in front of Dexa."* NoSidepathsNoExplorationNoFreedom: Many ground missions that take place on a ship or space station will give you very little freedom in the way of completing the mission. You'll have to travel through the area to the designated path, completing various tasks along the way. In "Boldly They Rode", [[spoiler: The Founder tells you that you're the best candidate to infiltrate Deep Space 9 to reclaim it from the inside by saying that the Jem'Hadar are designed for assault and not infiltration, while Starfleet training covers space walks and such.]] Your character lampshades this by saying "Why do I feel like I've just been [[RailRoading railroaded]]?"* NotTheIntendedUse: Ramming Speed is an ability you can learn around the mid 20 levels (Commander). It's purpose is to allow a Captain of a ship below 50% Hull to perform a TakingYouWithMe attack on an enemy, or at least severely damage them. It also greatly boosts the user ship's speed, which, if they are near the max 10km range of weapon fire, or have a nearby asteroid or object to break Line of Sight between them and the enemy, or an ally that charges in and distracts the enemy, can instead be used by a Captain who feels that today is ''not'' a good day to die, and run for it, giving extra time to the ship crew to enact repairs, let your other abilities and BOFF abilities recharge, and prepare to return to the fight.* OhCrap: At the end of "Uneasy Allies", [[spoiler:various Starfleet, KDF and Romulan Republic ships are taking notice of the ''third'' Dyson Sphere in Iconian space. They're ready to invade.]]* OldSchoolDogfight: Not only do you have massive ships flying around like it's 1941 again, but [=NPC=]s often have fighter ships accompanying them. Tiny one or two shots to kill but annoying little fighters.* OneBulletLeft: When the Player (and several NPC ships, namely the Enterprise-F, Bortasqu', Lleiset, ''and'' Voyager) are in a dire situation fighting the Undine [[spoiler:to defend Qo'noS from imminent destruction by a new Undine planet killer]], Tuvok reveals that Voyager has exactly ''one'' Bio-molecular Torpedo left from the last time Voyager fought the Undine. Particularly noteworthy as the last time Voyager fought the Undine was '''40 years ago''' during [[Series/StarTrekVoyager the show]], and it has sat there in the armory all this time patiently waiting for its moment. [[spoiler:And then Captain Shon has to go and steal the scene]].* OneGenderRace:** While it is implied that there are female members of the Gorn, Nausicaan, and Lethean races, the fact that one has never shown up in any canonical source (or even described in any of the ExtendedUniverse books) prevents the developers from allowing the female gender of these races to be playable. Strangely averted with a few Federation races though. For example, there's never been any ''confirmed'' depiction of a female Tellarite anywhere in the series, and the same for a few other races, yet they all have both genders available to play as.** Played even straighter with the Jem'Hadar; since they're all genetically-engineered cloned soldiers, there's no need for two genders for biological reproduction.** Possibly justified in regards to the Gorn: Would a female dinosaur/crocodile-person [[NonMammalMammaries really be feminine by Human standards?]]* OneHitKill: Many boss-level NPC ships have weapons that can do this, but the worst offenders are possibly the thalaron weapon of the Scimitar dreadnoughts and the plasma energy bolts of the Borg Unimatrix 0047 command ships in the red alert missions; the torpedoes will vaporize any ship they hit just like the weapons used by V'Ger in ''Film/StarTrekTheMotionPicture''.* OneProductPlanet: Certain stellar bodies are often noted for being useful for one type of industry. For example, asteroids are usually only inhabited because of their mining qualities. Some planets will describe how it's native races became known due to their huge advancements in agriculture or what-have-you.* OrbitalBombardment: Engineers get the Orbital Strike skill, capable of wiping out a large group of enemies in one hit. It also works indoors for some reason. And then you get to "Cutting the Cord" and its optional objective of calling in orbital strikes, and all of a sudden your ship is a veritable KillSat, wiping out Romulans and fighters left and right.* OrwellianEditor: An out-of-game example. After a patch on August 23rd, 2012, Klingon players started noticing a new ship design flying around while they fought against Starfleet enemies. The ship in question was the ''Wells''-class, the same as the ''U.S.S. Relativity'' from ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'' - a Time Ship from the '''29th century.''' Cryptic made sure that no screenshots were allowed to be posted on the forums by diligently deleting any thread where one was posted. Now that the ship has been officially released though, they no longer have to hide anything from the media.** They're doing this again after the March 28th, 2014 TRIBBLE patch showing off a new Risa.* OrwellianRetcon: After ''Legacy of Romulus'' launched Cryptic started going back through the early missions and tweaking them, culminating in season 9's complete rewrite of the Borg and Undine episodes as one episode titled "Borg Advance". While most of the changes were fairly well-thought-of, "Where Angels Fear to Tread" (formerly "The Return") had what was previously an ordinary Romulan Star Navy captain fiddling with Borg tech[[labelnote:*]]something Starfleet and the KDF have been doing, too[[/labelnote]] get retconned to be a Tal Shiar officer who was experimenting on Republic [=POWs=]. This made the moral choice (left over from the previous version) of what to do with her and the Borg tech she's experimenting on no actual choice at all.* OurDwarvesAreDifferent: Tellarites, plain and simple. They're short (an average height of 4 feet tall,) usually have [[BadassBeard epic beards]], aesthetically ugly (pig-like facial features and wrinkles,) and ''LOVE'' to argue with others just because they can. Add a love of alcohol in there, and you'd have a dwarf by any other name in a more traditional fantasy setting.* OutOfCharacter: One of the problems with the Star Clusters is that ground maps randomly spawn a certain group of baddies for a map. Thus, it wasn't uncommon to find the Borg down on some random planet looking for objects from their Third Borg Dynasty (?) or trying to put people into slavery (?!)* OverrankedSoldier:** Character rank is tied to CharacterLevel and caps out at fleet admiral for Starfleet and the Romulan Republic, general/Dahar Master (general is the top ''rank'', at 55, Dahar Master is a very prestigious title gotten at level 60) for the KDF, which happens at level 60. But apart from tacs getting the ability to call in another ship to help them out if their hull drops below 50%, there's no real difference from when you hit Captain at level 30. You're still flying just one ship instead of commanding an organization, you regularly get ordered around by [=NPC=]s you outrank, and there isn't a single mission available that makes more sense for a flag officer to handle rather than a captain (for that matter some of them actually make more sense for ''enlisted personnel'' rather than officers, period). The announcement that the''Delta Rising'' expansion would raise the level cap to 60 led to jokes on the forums that the expansion after next makes you President of the Federation.** "Surface Tension" makes their Admiralty rank actually relevent for once - the player assumes command of the joint task force during the battle as the senior most officer in the fleet and {{Foreshadowing}} a promotion to the upper echelon of Admiralty.* OvershadowedByAwesome: Many less-interesting ships, especially Fleet versions, tend to go on the wayside for more flashier ships. You're more likely to find a Fleet ''Avenger'' than, say, a Fleet ''Ambassador''.* PercussiveMaintenance: The "basic engineer" at Starbase 39's starship area, on the console linked to the Federation bank, [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YPEXATsaWg is continually hitting the console with fists, repeatedly.]]* {{Permastubble}}: Even if you choose to have your male character clean-shaven, zooming in on his face will still show him to have a 5 o'clock shadow.* PerpetuallyStatic:** Four years after launch and it's still 2409 in the game universe. In fact, the game conforms to all of the PerpetuallyStatic world and story rules.** The Romulan storyline starts off with an exception -- by locking you into a version of the Sector Block that isn't quite the same as the one you'll see later for the first arc, it can be capped off with a significant change to the sector (a new planet is colonized, changing the name of the planet/system and creating a new central hub for your faction) and a story-wise major shift in political relations and attitudes (your faction is formally recognised by the Federation and the Klingon Empire, and establishes an alliance with both of them). The storyline after that alludes to major changes occurring off-screen (so to speak), keeping Cryptic from having to change the actual game-world.** The devs have made subtle hint in CONTENT that its not 2409 despite [[UnreliableNarrator arguing that it is.]] Most notably, [[http://thomasthecat.tumblr.com/image/24659934507 the Enterprise-F's dedication plaque]] made by Thomas Marrone the UI artist (and maker of these things) for the game gives a Stardate that says she was launched "August 30th, 2410."** This may be starting to break: the LocationSubtitles at the start of the Season 9 Feature Episode, ''Surface Tension'', specify that the mission takes place in 2410.* PhysicalGod: Q, of course, who spends much of his time hanging around Earth Spacedock, dispensing boons to passing captains and occasionally [[BalefulPolymorph turning them into small housepets]]. It should be noted that this Q is not the rogueish Q we are most accustomed to, nor is it his [[Series/StarTrekVoyager lover, Q]]. Nor is it his [[Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration close friend Q]]. The Q in question is actually his son, [[Series/StarTrekVoyager Q]], who seems to have grown up much like his father, despite his aunt [[Series/StarTrekVoyager Kathy's]] influence.* PintsizedPowerhouse:** The [[Series/StarTrekDeepspaceNine Defiant-class]] and its variants, naturally. Made all the more apparent by the fact that lower-tier, weaker escorts (especially the Akira, the class you use before upgrading to the Defiant) are much, much bigger. And then you get to the Vice Admiral-tier retrofit, which (being Vice Admiral-tier) is one of the most powerful ships in the game, and throws in the Federation's only [[StealthInSpace cloaking device]] to sweeten the deal yet further.** Another example is the Aquarius Escort, a tiny bundle of cannons and torpedoes that serves as a very nasty surprise for anyone stupid enough to take on an [[MightyGlacier Odyssey Tactical Cruiser]].* PistolWhipping: One of the melee attacks your character (or your away team members) can use is to smack enemies with the butt of their weapon. [[Film/StarTrekNemesis Works far better than when Picard tried it though]].* PlanarShockwave: The game ''loves'' these; several weapons and special abilities (as well as the destruction of any ship powered by a singularity core) generate these, which can have effects ranging from temporarily disabling your ship's special abilities, to knocking you back, to possibly delivering a one-hit kill in the case of the revamped [[ThatOneBoss Crystalline Entity]].* PlanetOfCopyhats: The only Benthan who ever appeared in ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'' was basically a Space FBI Agent. Come ''Delta Rising'', SpacePolice has become the Benthans' Hat.* PlanetSpaceship: The Voth fortress-ship in the PVE raid "The Breach". Starfleet's ''Odyssey''-class has been scaled as roughly a kilometer in length, and this thing probably dwarfs a hundred Oddys end-to-end. Oh, and it carries multiple ''Citadel''-class dreadnoughts within it like fighters, each of them roughly 10 km long.* PleasurePlanet: [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lzjn-gGyY6E There's really nothing to do in Risa but hang out and/or party.]]* PointDefenseless: You can use your ship's weapons to shoot down fighters, boarding shuttles, mines, and heavy torpedoes, but you can't get a lock on standard torps.* PosthumousNarration: A variant. Creator/LeonardNimoy provides narration in-character as Ambassador Spock, describing recent events upon entering a new sector block, and narrating the opening cinematic for Federation player characters. His character was not really killed in his last prime-universe appearance, but everyone in the prime universe would reasonably assume him dead and he was thrown back in time and into an AlternateUniverse well before the events that he describes.* PowerCreep: This is one of the main problems with [=PVP=] in the game; with the addition of new ships with varying new special abilities and unique weapons, not to mention the various new skills and abilities from the reputation system, which makes fighting other players about as appealing a prospect as waging war with nuclear weapons.* PreMortemOneLiner: Several examples, mostly involving Romulan characters.--> '''Romulan player-character''': "This is more than you deserve." ''[[BoomHeadshot Shoots Hakeev in the head]]''--> '''Sela''': "I guess you better go then." ''Kicks [[spoiler: Taris]] off a ledge''--> '''Player-character''': "You earned this, Farek." ''blows up Farek's ship with her onboard''* ProtagonistCenteredMorality: In several missions you're sent to keep Borg technology out of the hands of your enemies. After all, it's simply too dangerous to meddle with, right? And then you get the Special Task Force rewards. That's right, [[spoiler:a full set of Borg technology for your ship.]]** It should be noted that this is expanded on in the ''Legacy of Romulus'' expansion. The players use Borg tech to modify their ships but they don't let the Borg stuff start assimilating their vessels like Nero did in ''Film/StarTrek''. Hakeev starts letting the borg tech completely take over his flagship. The result is a [[spoiler: ''Narada''-class dreadnought.]] The moral changes to "using salvaged tech is all right, but don't use it to create a massive planet-eating fleet destroying WMD." Further expanded on ''just'' prior to finding out about the [[spoiler: ''Narada''-class dreadnaught]] -- salvaging Borg tech is one thing, doing experiments with Borg tech involving [[spoiler: ''implanting it into captives until they become asssimilated'']] is another.** It's also possible to be as Ferengi as a Starfleet officer possibly can be in-game (especially if the PC is ''playing'' a Ferengi character): In the Duty Officer missions "Confiscate Contraband from Crew", "Inspect Civilian Freighter", and "Investigate Reports of Trafficking in Contraband", your duty as a Starfleet officer is to confiscate contraband items from those who should not possess them (such as Federation civilians, smugglers, ''your own crew''). Normally, you could turn the Contraband over to a Starfleet Tactical officer at a starbase... ''or'' you could ''sell it'' at the in-game auction house, The Exchange, for ''obscene'' amounts of in-game currency ("Energy Credits").*** Then again, how often did the protagonists of the various ''Star Trek'' TV series look the other way when someone obtained illegal Romulan ale, as long as ''they'' could partake as well?* {{Privateer}}: Empress Sela of the Romulan Star Empire starts hiring outsiders as privateers to destroy Republic ships. These include the Cardassian guerrillas known as the [[TheRemnant True Way]].* ProudWarriorRaceGuy:** The archetypical examples are a whole ''playable faction'', and they pick up a few other lesser-known Trek examples under their banner too.** Given the mind-blowing freedom the character creation tool gives the player in creating ''their own alien species'', we can expect quite a few running around out there.** The Undine consider themselves this as well. The Romulans also have shades of this, with elements of ''Rihannsu'' being incorporated into STO's story. And then there's the Cardassians, Jem'Hadar, [[spoiler:Terran Empire]], Remans, Hirogen...** In the "Breen Invasion" episode the Breen are cast as the Proud Soldier Race variant. Reference this conversation with a Breen POW in "Cold Comfort":--->'''PlayerCharacter:''' Do you believe that the goal you are attempting to achieve was worth killing civilians?\\'''Tran:''' I didn't want to attack this ship.\\There is a nobility to being a soldier. When I enter battle, I know I could be killed. I know that others will die at my hands. But that is what we must do. It is part of being a soldier.\\Civilians are not part of this unspoken agreement. They do not wake up each day and know in their hearts it could be their last. They should be out of bounds as targets for people like you and me. There is no honor in fighting someone who is unprepared to fight back.\\I regret that I had orders to kill these civilians. More than that, I regret that I carried out those orders.* PunBasedTitle:** Every mission in the "Breen Invasion" arc has a pun on the word "cold" in the title.** The Undine fleet action "Viscous Cycle" (on "vicious cycle").* PunchedAcrossTheRoom: This is the Vaadwaur Overseer's specialty; they can wipe out entire heavily armed squads using nothing but their fists!* PurpleIsPowerful: Very Rare items, [=BOFFs=] and [=DOFFs=] have their words colored purple and their icons with a purple explosion on the lower right corner. Fleet items, though, are half blue, half purple.* RammingAlwaysWorks:** The "Ramming Speed" ability throws all the player's power into their engines, allowing them to damage enemy ships by crashing into them. However, since the ability only works when the player's hull integrity is down to 25%, using the maneuver typically destroys the player's ship as well.*** The original version of the power played it straight since it could be used at any time and increased in damage based on speed. A ship using speed buffs could one-hit kill anything without shields, up to and including the crystalline entity.** [[spoiler:In "Surface Tension", Captain Shon saves Qo'noS from the Undine by ramming their doomsday weapon with the USS ''Aquarius''.]]* RailShooter: The player gets put on one of these at the climax of "Surface Tension", [[spoiler:covering Captain Shon's attack run on the Undine planet killer]].* RecursiveAmmo:** Cluster torpedoes, which fire like normal torpedoes but split into a medium sized but extremely dense (normal mines deploy 4 in an area about as big as a ship this deploys 20+ in that same area) auto armed mine field (the mines the track in to the target).** The Bio-neural Warhead, a large tricobalt torpedo with point-defense turrets.** The Variable Auto-Targeting Armament, the unique console of the Starfleet ''Avenger''-class battlecruiser. VATA fires a pair of missiles whose effect and submunition vary by which cruiser command is active on the ''Avenger''. The shield booster command causes the VATA to shoot tachyon beams that damage shields, and do an AreaOfEffect shield debuff when they hit. The weapon efficiency command makes it shoot quantum torpedoes and hit for pure kinetic damage. The maneuvering booster command turns both into chroniton weapons, which do damage and debuff speed and maneuvering. The Klingon ''Mogh''-class has a similar console.* RedShirt:** Of course. If you have less than four Bridge Officers who can beam down on an away mission with you (or you just don't want to bring them), they get replaced with Redshirts. They are in fact nameless, lack personality, ''and [[VideoGameCrueltyPotential you can even use them for cover]]'', if [[YouBastard you so wish]].** The "death penalty" (as it was supposed to be implemented) for being defeated in space is a loss of part of your Redshirt crew; lose too many and ship functions are impaired and you must return to a starbase for repairs. There is no death penalty for normal difficulty, and you can go from a ship full of corpses to being fully manned by alive crewmen within minutes. On higher difficulty settings, you will accumulate injuries and ship damage that reduce stats and need an item or returning to a starbase to remove.** The Fleet Support ability. You summon a nameless starship to help you in space combat. The ship can be destroyed just like any other. Nobody's gonna care that the nameless science vessel got destroyed. Just a whole crew of redshirts who gave their lives because you ordered them to. On the other hand, you do need to be in moderately serious trouble before you can request a whole other ship to bail you out, so there's that. This was later patched to where the support vessel warps out after taking too much damage.** Many doff assignments have a casualty risk associated with them. Doffs of rarity "uncommon" or higher just have to spend a few hours in sickbay. Common doffs, which all have the rank of crewman, are usually killed.* TheRemnant: ** The True Way is a terrorist organization composed of rogue Jem'Hadar and Cardassian military men who want to overthrow the civilian Cardassian government formed post-''Deep Space Nine'' and restart the Dominion War.** The eponymous 2800 of ''The 2800'' mission arc is a time-travel twist on the holdout that hasn't heard the war is over -- they are a fleet of 2800 Dominion ships from the height of the Dominion War that entered the Wormhole in 2374 and exit it in 2409, promptly attacking Deep Space 9 in the belief the war is still ongoing.** The Tal Shiar and the Romulan Star Empire ''starts'' as far more powerful than this, but by the New Romulus reputation the Tal Shiar is a mere shadow of their former power while remaining Imperial loyalists are scattered and weak to the point of irrelevancy (in addition to the Tal Shiar having gone officially rogue).* ReptilesAreAbhorrent:** The Gorn turn it around by finding mammals repulsive.** As of Season 8, the Voth.* LaResistance:** Overlapping somewhat with TheRemnant, there are frequent mentions KDF-side of Gorn rebels who reject the Klingon conquest of their species.** Obisek leads the Reman Resistance to free his people from slavery under what's left of the Romulan Star Empire.* {{Retirony}}[=/=]WhatMeasureIsAMook: Episode "Spectres", mission "Skirmish". You board a True Way ''Galor''-class destroyer and can find a log entry by their chief engineer. He's considering leaving the group and returning to his wife and children on Cardassia Prime. He took a double dose of {{Retirony}}: if you hadn't killed him, [[spoiler:the Devidians attacking the ship from the inside would have]].* ReversePolarity: The skill "Reverse Shield Polarity" which causes energy weapons to increase rather than damage the shields.* RidiculouslyCuteCritter:** Tribbles. So cute they restore tons of HP to the player when you give them a cuddle. The Targs are somewhat less adorable.** Sehlat cubs have been added to the C-Store. Basically huge [[CuteKitten kittens]]. Adult Sehlats are equally adorable, looking like cheetahs with lion manes, except more cuddly.** The Epohhs on New Romulus also count. You can even domesticate them and keep them as pets.* RoleReprisal:** Chase Masterson is back as [[Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine Leeta]][[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDBITGf9MHQ ...sort of.]] (Leeta licensed her holographic image to Quark for his dabo tables.)** Denise Crosby returned as Natasha Yar for the 3rd Anniversary mission featuring the ''Enterprise''-C, "Temporal Ambassador". She also reprises her role as Sela for her appearances in the Romulan storyline and Romulan-centred Featured Episode series, ''and'' is the voice congratulating a Romulan character on being promoted.** Michael Dorn is back as Worf for the Featured Episode "Sphere of Influence" and (after a short delay) for his scenes in the early Klingon missions.** Tim Russ is back as Tuvok not only for the Feature Episode for the Fourth Anniversary ("A Between Stars"), as well as Season 9 and onward.** Leonard Nimoy as Mr. Spock who narrates and appears in an early Federation mission.** Garret Wang, Ethan Phillips, Jeri Ryan, and Robert Picardo will be returning in ''Delta Rising'' as Harry Kim, Neelix, Seven of Nine, and the Mk I Emergency Medical Hologram, respectively.* RookieRedRanger: Combined with a hefty dose of EnsignNewbie. The player character is given command of a starship at the rank of ''Ensign''. It's somewhat justified, in that these aren't the best times in Federation history, and that [[YouAreInCommandNow Starfleet is grabbing capable commanders from wherever it can find them.]]** The above is not only justified, it's ''[[LampshadeHanging outright stated in-game by the Admiral you get your orders from]]''** Also, you did take out a Borg ''Cube'' in the tutorial. It just gets better. * RuleOfCool:** All over this game, as the demands of MMO players for character customization cause mundane concerns like consistency and plausibility to take a back seat.** The AwesomeAnachronisticApparel (see above), in which characters can choose to mix-and-match pieces of uniforms, going all the way back to the TOS or even ''Enterprise'' era. When was the last time the US Army let its soldiers come to work in Civil War or Revolutionary Army uniforms just because the soldiers thought they ''looked cooler'' than modern fatigues?** Starship armaments and components can be scavenged from the wreckage of enemy spaceships--and Federation ships can field phasers, disruptors, plasma cannons, or whatever the heck their player feels like slapping into them. Likewise, individual officers strip weapons and armor off of corpses and carry whatever armament they feel like, up to and including the equivalent of heavy machine guns. The 25th-century Starfleet seems to be made up of 17th-century buccaneers.** Putting Ensigns and Lieutenants (and as of Season 8, ''a cadet who [[YouAreInCommandNow became acting captain]] on their midshipman cruise'') in charge of entire starships. True, the Abrams movie did put raw academy graduates on the bridge, too, but at least it ranked them accordingly. Given a handwave in ''The Path to 2409'' to the effect that Admiral Quinn authored a policy to fast-track the promotions of promising officers.* RunningTheBlockade: Episode "Cardassian Struggle", mission "[[OperationBlank Operation Gamma]]" has the Player Character, flying a shuttle, break past Jem'Hadar lines at Deep Space 9 and go through the wormhole to contact the Dominion government and get the time-shifted Jem'Hadar to stand down. You're assisted by a diversionary attack.[[/folder]][[folder:Tropes S-Z]]* SacrificialPlanet: Episode "Klingon War", mission "The Doomsday Device", which is for all intents and purposes an expanded repeat of the TOS episode set 150 years later. Another planet killer half-destroys a small moon ahead of it before the player attacks to prevent Ambassador B'vat from siccing it on the Federation.* ScarfOfAsskicking: Three were released during the Winter Event. There's also the Tholian Silk Scarf in the Lobi Store.* SceneryPorn:** Let's take a gander; [[EarthIsTheCenterOfTheUniverse Earth Spacedock]], [[Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine Deep Space Nine (Complete with the Bajoran Wormhole!)]], [[Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries Deep Space K7]], [[TearJerker the memorials at Wolf 359 and Romulus]], ''good lord''. That's not even mentioning the amounts in random and story missions.** [[http://www.startrekonline.com/dyncontent/startrek/uploads/Wallpaper-23-1680x1050.jpg Space]] [[http://www.startrekonline.com/dyncontent/startrek/uploads/Wallpaper-24-1680x1050.jpg is]] '''[[http://www.startrekonline.com/dyncontent/startrek/uploads/Wallpaper-25-1680x1050.jpg really]]''' [[http://www.startrekonline.com/dyncontent/startrek/uploads/Wallpaper-26-1680x1050.jpg pretty.]]** The city of Hathon on Bajor and New Romulus are freaking gorgeous and really shows how the art has evolved since launch. Hathon being our first real look at a Bajoran city (on Deep Space Nine, Bajor was only seen indoors, in monastaries or in remote mountain regions due to budget constraints) and New Romulus being the first open world adventure zone in game featuring everything from cities to rivers and forest and craggy mountains..** [[DoomedHomeTown Virinat]] (the Romulan starting tutorial zone). OH GOD VIRINAT. People are actually upset it's not a social zone on Tribble (which means it's subject to change).** The brand new ESD interior counts as well. It's a mix of design aesthetics from the Citadel (which was partially inspired, according to the devs, by ESD) and the new Origin Interiors. The end result is a very 25th century CrystalSpiresAndTogas design.* SchmuckBait: How do you get the Borg Science Boff Candidate from the Khitomer in Stasis STF mission? Jump into the Borg instant death machine!* SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale[=/=]UnitsNotToScale: Very nearly everything is out of scale with one another. If you visit the bridge of your ship and travel the corridors, or even visit any place on foot, it looks like the ceiling is a good 10 meters tall, if not higher. The distances between stars are ludicrously small. Example: in game, the distance between Sol and Wolf 359 is roughly 2.6 light years. Wolf 359 is a real star that's 7.8 light years from Sol. Same thing with Vulcan - in game the distance between the two is 6.3 light years, but in canon Vulcan orbits 40 Eridani A, a star that's 16.45 light years away from Sol. And then we get to the ArbitraryMaximumRange of starships - not just weapons like phasers and torpedoes, which was already covered above, but the absurdly small range of ship scanners - I have to be 15 kilometers away from a ship before I can find out what type or level it is? This is supposed to be the 25th century - ships during the Next Generation and Deep Space 9 era had scanners with a much greater range than that, and the technology is supposed to have only gotten more advanced.\\\\According to Cryptic this is partly a RuleOfFun thing. They wanted everything to be its canon size but they realized this was going to be a problem when they made Deep Space Nine's map... and [=DS9=] turned out to be so small it looked pathetic and weak in comparison to crowds of player ships that are frequently over half a klick in length (especially after the Romulans were added in ''Legacy of Romulus''). In-game its about '''five times''' its canon size simply to keep the station's pedigree.* ScrewTheRulesImDoingWhatsRight: This being Star Trek, it happens.** On the Federation side, we have the infamous Section 31 again. They're still playing fast and loose with the rules such as Prime Directive, but led by Franklin Drake, they've gotten a bit better since the ''[[Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine DS9]]'' days. Of note, the operations they're involving you in, primarily are against factions and species that have pretty much no intent to ever negotiate with, well bluntly put, anyone else in the Alpha Quadrant (Such as the Undine, or the Devidians)** Can be invoked by the players in some cases to a limited extent. Of particular note is at end of the Romulan Mystery arc, where players can choose if they wish to side with [[spoiler: Obisek and the Reman Resistance against the Tal Shiar, as payback for their abuses against the Remans, siding with the Iconians, and being the ones behind the Hobus supernova that ''destroyed Romulus''--or if you wish to go by the books and attempt to arrest Obisek for possessing thalaron weapons and preparing to use them. Weapons which Obisek even openly admits he is reluctant to use, and he would rather prefer not to fight you.]]* ShootTheDog: The Klingons' pursuit of the [[spoiler: Undine]] has led them to declare war on virtually every Alpha Quadrant power they ''think'' may be infiltrated by them[[note]]such as the highest levels of power of the Federation, according to Starfleet Intelligence[[/note]], even setting aside the actions of [[spoiler: Ambassador B'Vat and his followers,]] the Klingon's are probably guilty of numerous war crimes. [[spoiler: Never stopping to think that maybe they're just as heavily infiltrated as they assume everyone else is.]] Several missions, however, show that there are those in the empire who [[Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine remember the lessons learned from the Dominion War]], and who wish to secure a cease-fire at the very least.** What makes it worse is that there's every indication that they're ''right'', but going about it in completely the ''wrong'' way.** ''A Step Between Stars'' reveals [[spoiler: not only were the Klingons completely ''right.'' Starfleet really is as heavily infiltrated as thought by the Klingons.]] (SlowClap) [[SurroundedByIdiots Way to go, Starfleet.]]* SerialEscalation: "Avatar" customization, as noted above. It isn't just your captain, '''''everything''''' involved with your "Gestalt Avatar" in the game (ship, officers, etc) is customizable. This is a massive step up from Cryptic's previous efforts, which ''already'' set the bar for character customization in an MMO. '''And they keep adding ''more'' options.'''* SeriesContinuityError:** In "The City At The Edge Of Never", it's mentioned that the Gateway Planet had been on lockdown since the day Kirk first discovered this. However, as the mission was made prior to ''WesternAnimation/StarTrekTheAnimatedSeries'' was made officially canon, "Yesteryear" wasn't part of that.** "Sphere of Influence" has the Romulan Republic claim territorial jurisdiction over the gateway to the Dyson spheres, but [[Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration TNG]]: "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS3E26S4E1TheBestOfBothWorlds The Best of Both Worlds]]" establishes the Jouret system (the location of the gate) as ''Federation'' territory. [[note]] However, it has been a long time since the events of 'The Best of Both Worlds', so the political borders have likely been changed with everything else going on. [[/note]]* ShortRangeShotgun:** "Pulsewave assault" weapons are an energy weapon equivalent. They're shorter-ranged than other weapons but their secondary will do serious damage across a wide AreaOfEffect. Players prefer them against Borg because it's one shot rather than several (meaning a lower chance for the drones to adapt) and because the Borg tend to ZergRush and a gun that shoots only one target is usually a liability.** The "Zefram Cochrane's Shotgun" by virtue of being a "physical" version of one of the normal weapons. It's essentially a reskinned pulsewave assault weapon that [[ArmorPiercingAttack penetrates shields]].* ShotgunsAreJustBetter: The special item "Zefram Cochrane's Shotgun" from the November 2014 Mirror Universe Incursion event is this. As many players point out, this is pretty much a cheap alternative to the TR-116B as it pierces shields 100% and its second attack can [[BlownAcrossTheRoom blow your opponents across the room]].* ShoutOut: [[ShoutOut/StarTrekOnline Now with its own page.]]* ShownTheirWork: During one of the Franklin Drake missions, you have to help calibrate a "cortical stimulator" based on tricorder readings of affected brain cells. The neuron factoids are basically spot-on.* SimilarlyNamedWorks: [[invoked]][[InUniverse In-game]]. Do not confuse the missions "Revelation" and "Revelations". The former is the mission in the Romulan Republic story where the player discovers that [[spoiler:the Tal Shiar blew up Hobus]], the latter is in ''Delta Rising'' and deals with TheReveal of the Vaadwaur as the BigBad for the expansion. Even Memory Beta goofed this one up.* SimulationGame: Of ''Franchise/StarTrek'' in general, from the landing missions to exploration, and oh-so-much {{Technobabble}}.** Hilariously, though, one of the reasons for so many complaints about the game is that it isn't simulation ''enough'' for some, who had envisioned a kind of "player bridge crew" game and a constant bridge-view of combat, ala ''Bridge Commander'' (even though that game also had a view outside the hull). Once Cryptic established that everyone would be a captain and that full player crews were not even on the drawing board, the rage from some corners was... [[FlameWar palpable]].** A lot of hardcore fans were/are also hoping and expecting the game to be a lot less RuleOfCool and a lot more serious and canon, and complain about hundred-year-old ships being able to go toe-to-toe with more recent ones, etc. (Of course, good luck getting any group of more than a half-dozen Trek fans to agree on what counts as "canon"...)* SixthRanger:** Players who have preordered their copy get an additional [[HeelFaceTurn rescued Borg crewmate]].** This also counts for a few extra Bridge Officers: the Feature Episodes the 2800, Cloaked Intentions and Cold War grants [=BOFFs=] from the Jem'Hadar, Remans and Breen (though the Reman and Breen ones are specifically from the FE.)* SlippySlideyIceWorld: Q's Winter Wonderland, complete with a foot race on an ice track. You can even buy boots that reduce your traction and leave you sliding around ridiculously.* SmallGirlBigGun: Occasionally you'll spot height-challenged female player-characters lugging massive weapons such as the Antiproton Assault Minigun.* SmashMook: Gorn ground troops have very large soldiers who attack you by either trying to punch you or throw large boulders at you, with no reliance on energy weapons at all.* SmugSnake:** Hakeev, BigBad of the Cloaked Intentions arc. [[spoiler:His anticlimactic death]] only rubs it home.** The [[HuntingTheMostDangerousGame Hirogen]] basically have this as their [[PlanetOfHats hat]]. They're an overconfident, cowardly bunch who prefer to pick on crippled, defenceless prey and go on and on about how they're the greatest hunters ever until you send them running off to their Romulan daddies. At one point, they even pull a WoundedGazelleGambit to get sympathy from a passing Romulan patrol after their ambush goes horribly wrong.*** Hirogen are hunters, not warriors. It is logical that they prefer opponents who are weaker than themselves.** Another SmugSnake-hatted species is the Breen Confederacy. An encounter with Breen ships will ''inevitably'' involve their commander calling you for a round of smarmy taunting, seconds before you blow him and his buddies out of the sky.** Franklin Drake gives this impression, especially in the (revamped) early KDF storyline missions where he engages in witty banter while being pursued by members of the Klingon military.** According to Sela, the Iconians take this trope to the point that it's their greatest weakness.* SnowballFight:** The 2012 Q's Winter Wonderland event included this as one of the festivities, with animated snowmen as the opponents. The player could even purchase two different guns that [[AbnormalAmmo fire snowballs]] to give them an edge over the normal hand-thrown projectiles (with several more added in the 2013 event). The 2013 winter event even added a ground PVE mission which is basically a huge snowball fight with players [[ItMakesSenseInContext repelling a snowman invasion of a gingerbread colony]].** Also one of the winter-themed duty officer assignments available during the winter event.* SoLongAndThanksForAllTheGear: This can only be invoked by the players themselves, but the game warns you whenever you want to get rid of one of your officers or ships that any gear that's currently equipped on them will be lost as well.* SpaceClothes: Fully customizable ones, including the uniforms from ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'', ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' and the latter TNG films, and the tunics from ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'' and the more naval oriented red uniforms worn in ''Film/StarTrekIITheWrathOfKhan'' and onward. The game also provides an array of late 24th/Early 25th century uniforms for the players and crew to wear. It's a space clothes ''jamboree''.* SpaceElves: Vulcans, Romulans, and Remans all fit the bill. As far as Star Trek goes, they all fit the Elvish archetypes. Vulcans are a straight Type 2 example. Romulans border between type 2 and type 3 due to their mistrust of others (especially after what happened to their homeworld), and Remans are unfairly categorized as a type 3 due to their physical appearance and how their whole race has been treated as 2nd class citizens by the Romulans. There are a few other races who have at least pointed ears [[spoiler: including the [[AncientAstronauts Preservers]], who definitely qualify as a type 2]].* SpaceFillingPath: A few ground maps are like this. "The Cure" is one such map, of the ping-pong path variety.* SpaceIsAnOcean: Oh so very much, it's Trek afterall.** Actually [[DiscussedTrope ''discussed'' ]] in the 20-man Fleet Event by one of the freighters.---> "You know, Space really ''is'' like an ocean."** Fluidic Space, the Undine's home, is so very much this. To the point where the waves will knock your ship around when you're in it.* SpaceIsNoisy: And how! Practically every type of energy weapon and torpedo has a distinct sound effect when fired, along with many abilities when they're activated. You can also clearly hear the sound of your ship's engines while underway.* SpaceMarine:** Starfleet/KDF Tactical Officers are essentially this, focusing on weapons buffs and squad command/support tactics. Starfleet Security also, naturally, as they've been like this since ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' at the very least.** There's also the [=MACOs=], Omega Force and the Klingon Honor Guard. Their job? ''Killing Borg.'' And the player joins them at Level 45.* SpecialGuest:** Not only do you have Leonard Nimoy taking up his role as Spock from ''[=TOS=]'', but Denise Crosby makes an appearance as Tasha Yar in the 3rd anniversary mission, and then goes on to voice Sela during substantial portions of the ''Legacy of Romulus'' content.** Don't forget Zachary Quinto as an EMH during the tutorial mission and Chase Masterson reprising her role as a (holographic representation of) Leeta from Deep Space Nine.** Michael Dorn lent his talents to Worf for the mission "Sphere of Influence" which led up to the launch of season 8.* SpiderPeople: The Tholians. They scuttle around sideways like a crab and can wrangle you in by entrapping you in their webbing.* SpiderTank: The Vaadwaur use four-legged ones in ''Delta Rising'', as seen in the cinematic that plays the first time you enter the Delta Quadrant.* SpiritualSuccessor:** Watching the trailers focusing on tactics and space combat, one might assume the developers had played quite a bit of ''VideoGame/StarTrekStarfleetCommand'' or ''VideoGame/StarTrekBridgeCommander''. [[SoCoolItsAwesome There's a fair number of people who don't object to this in the slightest, mind.]]** A few others might describe the overall experience (with the mix of ship and ground action and whatnot) as the old Spectrum Holobyte games, but with the proper level of technology behind it now to pull it off and design gone terribly, wonderfully ''right'', especially in the weekly missions which give you lots of plot and dialogue options on top of the fighting.* SortingAlgorithmOfEvil: Every enemy faction you encounter has a hierarchy of {{mooks}} of varying degrees of "ability to kick the players ass". For instance, the Klingon's mook hierarchy seems to be:-->Warrior\\Officer\\Munitions Officer, [[GoddamnedBats Targ Handler]]\\[[DemonicSpider Swordmaster]]\\[[AnticlimaxBoss Boss Character]] (Klingon Captain or what have you)* SpiderTank: The Vaadwaur employ these as mobile fire support for their ground forces during the siege of Kobali Prime.* SplashDamage: Most slow-moving projectiles such as tricobalt torpedoes cause area of effect damage, which means you can harm yourself if you're too close when it detonates. The gigantic plasma balls that Borg Unimatrix units shoot at you is actually the best way to destroy them. They are OneHitKill weapons, so unless you roll an extremely lucky roll to dodge the plasma ball, you will be vaporized in the process, but if you've taken down the Unimatrix's shields first, then one shot will knock it down by about 40% of it's life. They fire them frequently enough that you'll have it dead before too long. It's also quite satisfying to see the entire unimatrix be vaporized in the same manner that happens to your ship.* SprintMeter: Trying to run while engaged in combat on ground maps will allow you to perform a rapid sprint over a short distance, with a meter that shows how much further you can go before being forced back into the normal walking pace. Interestingly, this is averted when out of combat, as the player can run as long as they want.* StaffOfAuthority:** The Shrouded Phantasm, the 'leader' of the Devidians invading Drozana Station, carries one of these.** Players can also get one of their own when the Devidian featured episode is running.* StarfishAliens: The Horta from the Original Series make a return as an NPC 'pet' the player can acquire. There's several variations, some of which the player can use in combat to attack enemies. The Undine and Tholians both meet enough of the requirements cited on the page to count as well.** While they marginally resemble humanoids (two arms, two legs, a head...), the Elachi are quite starfishy. Their legs are digitigrade, their heads look like mushrooms with vertical mouths, and they are literally sentient fungi: they reproduce by growing on and feeding off of humanoid hosts.* StatingTheSimpleSolution: ** In "Capture the Flag" Gaius Selan and Narrel propose venting plasma onto a Vaadwaur who seems invincible in order to create a vulnerability. Since you're standing in the transporter room at the time your character suggests just [[TeleporterAccident beaming him out into space]], but Selan says he tried that already.** In ''Dust to Dust'', it's possible to suggest using transporters to bypass the Kobali temple's security measures in your hunt for [[spoiler: Keten/Ensign Kim]]. Captain Kim remarks that it's a good idea... and then, when trying to set it up, realizes that he can't contact his ship (prompting you to remark that the same seems to be true for your and your ship).* StatusBuffDispel: The science captain power "Subnucleonic Beam", which wipes out any active buffs on the target and also temporarily increases boff power {{cooldown}}s, time dependent on your current auxiliary power level.* StandardSciFiFleet: Par for the course with this trope. Whenever you see a fleet of ships entering into the area, they all swarm in without all that much distance set between each other.* StealthInSpace:** Various [[TheEmpire Klingon]] ships have the ability to cloak, the Bird Of Prey having a Battle Cloak that allows the small ships to perform hit and run attacks. TheFederation didn't...[[CoolStarship until the inclusion of an Admiral level variant of the]] [[BadAss Defiant equipped with a cloaking device]]. ''[[OhCrap Let the games begin...]]''** There is also the Galaxy-X dreadnought and Avenger battlecruiser; which can cloak (although the Avenger doesn't come with this standard; you have to cannibalize it from the aforementioned Defiant or Galaxy-X).** There are exactly two Romulan-specific ships that can't cloak -- the Lockbox/Lobi Temporal Vessels, and that's only because Cryptic decided, after considering options for a while, not to give the Romulans a special case with those two ships (the Federation and Klingon counterparts have the ''same'' stats as the other). To make it even better, Romulans (as in the species) have a trait that makes them better at cloaking, and Battle Cloaks are the ''default'' on their ships (their shuttles have to make do with ordinary cloaks).* StealthPun:** May 2012's addition to the Federation Fleet is the [[TheBattlestar Atrox Carrier]], a Vice Admiral level starship designed by the Caitians, a race of [[CatFolk humanoid felines]]. [[spoiler:It's a Cat Carrier.]]** Another one is third anniversary KDF ship, the Kamarag-class. Kamarag was the name of the Ambassador seen in Film/StarTrekIVTheVoyageHome and Film/StarTrekVITheUndiscoveredCountry. The pun? [[spoiler: It's the Klingon counterpart to the Federation Ambassador-class.]]* StoneWall: The Cruiser class ships are huge and turn at a snail's pace, but are supposed to have the best defenses in the game if you play them right.* StupidityIsTheOnlyOption: There will be times the game's story sticks you on a [[{{Railroading}} Warp Conduit, at Warp 9]], to the Bad Decisions Quadrant, causing GenreSavvy and Trek lore familiar players to [[OhCrap cringe]] at the point in an Episode [[ThisIsGonnaSuck when the signs of trouble set in]].** An early Federation side example, is an assignment involving the player being sent on what's supposed to be an easy, and safe VIP transportation of a Vulcan ambassador from Vulcan, to a monastery planet. It's quickly obvious early on in the mission from others familiar with the ambassador, and the ambassador's own actions that something is not right with him, and his (highly irritable) "illogical" behavior such as displaying clear impatience and anger, and refusal to use transporter technology. [[spoiler: What's worse, is that a small Klingon scouting fleet flat out warn you upon arrival at P'Jem, your destination planet, that the Ambassador you're carrying is a fraud and really a member of species 8472, aka The Undine. And While it is done while you're staring down the wrong end of a disruptor cannon with some insults thrown your way, the Klingons do inform you clearly the dangers the Undine present to everyone, and that you should hand the "ambassador" over. You immediately presume their lying, and go about destroying them without possibly having anyone of your crew perform a scan on your VIP passenger just on the odd chance they're right. No prizes for guessing how that turns out]]. On the other hand, this ''is'' the second mission after you take over your ship, so performing an idiot mistake like that ''is'' plausible.** A much more blatant example, happens in the" Romulan Mystery" series, during a Federation exclusive episode "Divide Et Impera". A Starfleet admiral joins your crew to investigate a secret Romulan outpost, under the reason that the Romulans are probably making weapons that violate various treaties and laws, because... they're Romulans! [[spoiler: So as you and your crew go about slaughtering (clearly distraught) Romulans, with a much higher than average number of those listed as being medics, and reading project notes, you find that all of it is medical equipment and supplies related. Your crew catch on that there is something wrong, but Admiral Zell, who provided you the information and joined you on this mission insist that clearly it's all just a cover, clearly there has to be something there. There is... a project to detect, and reveal shape changers such as the Undine trying to infiltrate the Alpha Quadrant. Guess who, or rather what, you've been leading around this Romulan base.]] Unlike the example above, at this point you are at the very least, an upper level for that Rank tier Commander. You have at this point, stopped B'Vat as part of the Klingon War front, stopped and fixed several attempts to change the correct timeline, dealt some damage to the Orion Syndicate and investigated a Tal Shiar base on Nimbus III. Again, the game offers you no alternative option, no chance to do the right thing. [[spoiler: Instead of relieving the "admiral" of duty, you allow yet another Undine to infiltrate and cause further diplomatic rifts to form between the Romulans and Federation by aiding in killing a lot of scientists. You don't lose any of Star Fleet's respect, as they acknowledge they were fooled to, but a lame defense that you were JustFollowingOrders from an imposter will hardly relieve the bitter taste of this forced stupidity]]. The original plan was that the mission was ''supposed'' to be followed up on, but [[AbortedArc was abandoned soon after]]. There have been a few {{Fic Fix}}es by players using the Foundry, and in January 2015 Cryptic announced they would be cutting the mission as part of a revamp of the "Romulan Mystery" episode.* StupidQuestionBait: The Foundry mission "Bait and Switch" has a mission briefing scene. The admiral finishes her briefing and asks for questions. One of the dialogue options has the PlayerCharacter ask where they got the name [[OperationBlank "Operation Blue Friday"]] for the mission. * SuicidalOverconfidence: "Do you think you can withstand the might of the ''(insert name of randomly generated alien race here)''? Ha! [[BullyingADragon I laugh at your arrogance!]]"* SuperPrototype: The game allows you to bear the NX prefix, which usually means that your spaceship is actually a prototype. It's more of a cosmetic addition, so there's no added effect to them.* SuperweaponSurprise: The reason everyone treads lightly around the [[SpaceAmish Aelasians]], a one-shot race in the Romulan arc, who used to be the mightiest empire in the galaxy before they forsook their warlike ways. Nobody's quite sure if they have any 'just in case' stuff left over from their glory days, and ''nobody'' wants to find out firsthand.* SwordBeam: The Tholian Crystalline Sword players can obtain through the Nukara Strikeforce reputation system has this as a special attack; absorbing incoming energy weapon fire and firing it right back at the enemy.* SymbolSwearing: The standard MMO profanity filter.* TakeThat: A subtle one to ''Film/StarTrekIntoDarkness''. In the Federation tutorial, one of the graduates says mid-conversation, "That's not how cold fusion works." In ''Into Darkness'', the device Spock uses to freeze the volcano was referred to as a "cold fusion device", whereas in reality cold fusion has nothing to do with lowering ambient temperatures.** Another one in the tutorial towards ''Film/StarTrek2009''. After the player is made First Officer on their training cruise, they have the option of telling their best friend (and future NumberTwo) that "the Captain sees greatness in me," directly quoting Pike's comments on Nu!Kirk. [[TakeThat Flores' response is call you an egomaniac.]]** The ''Delta Rising'' mission "Alliances" has one that combines TakeThatAudience and SelfDeprecation as a member of the Hierarchy refuses a test between your ship and two holographic Borg Probes and decides between your ship and a Voth Bulwark and wants to see how your crew works together, stating that "anyone can throw firepower at a target", most likely a playful jab at players who prefer "pew pew".* {{Technobabble}}: Naturally. Science-type vessels and officers literally ''specialize'' in technobabble-based powers, to buff you or your friends or debuff your enemies.* TechnologyPorn: Your very own customizable starship. The graphics are optimized to make her look as sexy as possible.* TenMinuteRetirement: Executive Producer Dan Stahl, who left in late 2011 to work for [[{{Farmville}} Zynga]], and later returned to Cryptic to work with the Foundry, before finally resuming his post as Executive Producer in mid February 2012.** As of 1/14/2014, Stahl has left ''again'' to work on some "secret project." [[HereWeGoAgain Players are convinced he'll be back in six months.]]* TertiarySexualCharacteristics: The Kobali have clearly-discernable genders, despite being incapable of sexual reproduction. It might be a result of their method of reproduction involving transforming corpses of species that ''does'' use sexual reproduction, or a biological artefact of the days before they did [[NoodleIncident the undetailed unwise thing]] that forced them into their current method of reproduction* ThemeNaming:** [[spoiler:The Undine, formerly Species 8472, who are now named [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ondine_%28mythology%29 after the water elemental of German myth]]. Their ships follow a similar naming convention, such as [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tethys_%28mythology%29 Tethys]] and [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dahut Dahut]].]]** On a less spoilery note, the ''Scimitar''-class Dreadnaught Warbird's two Cryptic-designed sister ships are the ''Falchion'' and ''Tulwar''-class Dreadnaught Warbirds -- all three being swords.* TheyDontMakeThemLikeTheyUsedTo: The ''Galaxy''-class is a 60 year old design by the game's timeframe, yet you'll be hard-pressed to find a tougher nut to crack. Many other top level cruisers are more offensively capable, but "The Big G" is one of the few ships that can survive the special OneHitKill attack from an elite Borg tactical cube that would turn any other ship into a rapidly expanding vapor.* TimeSkip: ''Surface Tension'' ''FINALLY'' sends players into the year 2410 after four years and 8 seasons in 2409.* TimeyWimeyBall: How [[spoiler:Natasha Yar from ''Yesterday's Enterprise'']] returns in the 3rd Aniversary Mission.** Tholians apparently have a non-linear time empire consisting of territory from multiple timelines and dimensions. This is only referenced ONCE in the entire STO Continuity and its via WordOfGod no less.* ToHellAndBack: One of the [[PlayerVersusEnvironment PVE]] Klingon missions involves your captain storming the gates of Gre'thor and killing Molor and his LegionsOfHell.* TooAwesomeToUse: Dilithium. While there are ''plenty'' of ways to obtain Dilithium in-game, players can only refine 8,000 a day. And with the best gear requiring Dilithium and fleets having their own reputation that requires Dilithium as well, you'll have players hoarding Dilithium for the sake of having enough for their gear.* TooFastToStop: Quite a few examples:** The Snow boots you get from Q's Winter Wonderland increase your speed, but they cause you to easily slip and slide and kill your breaks, causing you to slide until it decides you stop. Or you Jump.** The Borg, Omega, M.A.C.O. and Honor Guard space sets come with Impulse Engines whose speed is increased by your Coil Driver skill. Combine that with Warp Drives that do you same and you get ships with ungodly speed but, unless you're an Escort, cause you to easily power slide.* TookALevelInBadass: No question the Borg have done this since their repeated [[TheWorfEffect worfing]] on ''Voyager'', now easily holding their own against the Undine who so easily tore them apart before. The real surprise though comes from the Tholians, who in ''TOS'' needed their enemies to stand still for an hour while they formed a web around them, to now being able to ensnare you instantly, having capital ships and technology than can go toe-to-toe with Borg Cubes, and generally messing around with the entire space-time continuum.** TheFederation has done this as well. While it's argued that it takes the game further from Gene's peaceful future, there is something of serendipity in the fact the Feds finally have an ''officially'' desiginated battle cruiser (the ''Defiant'' was always officially an "escort") and took advantage of the fact that with the Romulan Star Empire's collapse and replacement with the Romulan Republic that they can now start openly using Cloaking Devices. And they're still pushing for diplomatic solutions to the wars while kicking ass.** The Romulan Republic is this for the Romulans as a whole. Specifically, the Romulan ''civilian population.'' After spending who knows how long under the oppressive Star Empire, the Romulans under the Reunificationists have finally bit back at the Tal Shiar and started their own democractic nation. Even better, they might overtake STARFLEET as the ScienceHero group in Star Trek by the virtue of having tough as nails science tech stolen from the Tal Shiar (including Borg-Modified ships), Singularity Cores, oh and they fixed a freaking [[spoiler: ICONIAN GATEWAY]]. Hard to believe only a few years ago these people were farming space grapes!** With "Delta Rising" set to be released, Cryptic decided not to leave the old Tier 5 ships in the dust and gave them the option to turn them into Tier 5-Upgraded, which puts them on equal footing or, in the case of Fleet ships, event ships, Lobi ships and Lockbox ships, ''superior'' than the new Tier 6 ships.* TrailersAlwaysSpoil: Or rather "E-Mail Notices Always Spoil" as the e-mail notification about Season 9's release date revealed [[spoiler:a humongous chunk of ESD being blown out.]]* TrashTheSet: ''Surface Tension'' has the Undine wrecking Earth Spacedock, giving the reasoning for the new and improved ESD.* TronLines: Not too long after ''Film/TronLegacy'' came out, a new equipment set included these for ships. Especially the ''Maelstrom'' class fleet escort. With a dark hull, it looks like it could have come right from the movie.* TwentyBearAsses: Some of the missions on Nimbus III and the Defera invasion zone fall into this, requiring you to gather a number of items from slain enemies (satellite access codes on Nimbus III, Borg cortical arrays on Defera).* TwentyFourHourArmor: Players can wear combat armor permanently as their character costume if they wish. This includes extremely tough looking elite endgame armor complete with helmets that hide the face.* TwoKeyedLock: Make that Three Keyed Lock in [[spoiler:Infected]]. And [[spoiler:[[ThatOneLevel there are five of them]].]]* TheTurretMaster: The Engineer 'Away Team Kit', including NPC Bridge Officers.** Can also be done in space by any player who has the Heavy Satellite Turret device equipped on their ship (though it can only be used a limited number of times before being completely expended).* TheUnintelligible: As per their depiction in ''Deep Space 9'', the Breen still speak in a series of metallic, electronic sounds, though the text still shows what they're saying; most of the time it's typical EvilGloating.* TurnsRed: Back when the Crystalline Entity was a boss you could fight with a group of up to 20 players, it sent out small crystal shards to impact player ships and was a relatively easy to kill DamageSpongeBoss. Those shards would then return to the main entity to heal it. The shards were easy to run away from or shoot down, so the fight was well balanced. Then the devs decided to make the fight more difficult: they changed it so that once you got the entity down to 30% health (which took a good while, even with 19 other guys helping), it would erupt shards at every player and OneHitKill almost everyone too slow to evade. This allowed the entity to heal itself back to to 100% in seconds, making it nearly impossible to defeat. Eventually, the boss would be removed from the game, not because the playerbase had raged over how they left the encounter untouched for over a year, but because the in-game event calendar was filling up with so many new and different events that it just wasn't practical to keep a near-impossible boss in the lineup.* UltimateEvil: [[spoiler:The Iconians. They were teased for more than four years before one finally shows up in "Surface Tension".]]* UnexpectedCharacter: A [[Series/StarTrekEnterprise Xindi representative]] shows up in "Surface Tension", pointing out that they know how it feels to be manipulated by outside forces.** Everyone knew that Harry Kim would return after his actor, Garret Wang, tweeted he was coming in for voice acting. They also figured Miral Paris, Icheb and Naomi Wildman would also be joining them due to their character models being heavily updated. No one expected, though, Seven of Nine, Neelix and the Emergency Medical Hologram Mk I (or "The Doctor") would be joining them** The Delta Rising mission "Friends in Unlikely Places" reintroduces us to [[spoiler:Hugh, the first Liberated Borg]].* TheUnfavorite:** This used to be true of the KDF in general. They have less than a quarter of the content of the Federation, an even smaller proportion of the game's famed character and ship customization, and a good chunk of the content they do have is copy/pasted from the Federation version to the point that it's not unheard of for the mission journal to list the objective "Hail Starfleet." They were also locked out of completing the accolades for the new Borg invasion because the Federation can access the Klingons' home sector but not vice versa, and tucked away in the free-to-play announcement was the minor note that fully half of the levels would be removed for KDF play in the future. Cryptic has also been remastering lower-level Federation missions with cinematics and voice acting while the KDF still had a whopping eight missions across thirty levels that weren't copy-pasted. By the time ''Legacy of Romulus'' rolled out, however, these issues had by and large been dealt with, as LoR gave the KDF a full level track as a banner feature alongside the new Romulan track, and the cosmetic issues had been addressed bit by bit beforehand.** In the same vein as the KDF, players feel that the Romulan Republic is now feeling the lack of love. While the Romulan Republic has a full level track, the main complaint is that the fact that they essentially "piggyback" on the Federation and the KDF, artificially boosting up their Tier 1-4 ships and making them not a full-fledged faction of their own. This has caused players to demand Cryptic to change this, especially with the events of "Surface Tension".** Many players see the Exploration Cruiser Retrofit, its Fleet variant and the Dreadnought Cruiser as this, due to the fact that it is demonstrably weaker than almost every other endgame cruiser. The Exploration Cruiser Refit and the Fleet version has a major leaning towards Engineering like their counterparts in tactical and science, the Tactical Escort Retrofit and Long-Range Science Vehicle Retrofit respectively. However this kills any type of offensive capability, making them good at not dying and nothing else. This was made even worse with the arrival of new cruiser classes like the Avenger which is essentially a powerhouse mixture of offense and defense to the point that it tanks as well as every other cruiser and outdamages most Escorts which are the traditional damage dealers of the game.\\\\This got worse when the Galaxy Revamp dropped. Even though the Exploration Cruiser Retrofit now had a special two-part Console bonus, nothing was changed about it. Even worse, even though the Dreadnought Cruiser could also benefit from it (gaining the ability to remove its saucer for the first time) and gained a Fleet version, it's [=BOFF=] layout change only meant that people were going to still use the same layout.** As of Season 9, the Aegis and Absolute Zero space sets can be seen as this. While they are absolutely loved by the players, especially due to the designs they add to the ships, they have been left in the dust by all the other space sets. The Absolute Zero is the only mission-based space set that does not come with a Mk XII counterpart[[note]]The Jem'Hadar space set can be upgraded for 200 Lobi while the Solanae automatically maxes out at Mk XII[[/note]] while the Aegis, once the premier space set, has never been modified to catch up with everyone else. The Aegis finally got its buff with Season 9.5 while the Absolute Zero set finally got theirs with the Upgrade addition to crafting just before the release of Delta Rising.** PVP in general. Though this has been part of the game for quite awhile, Cryptic rarely touches this portion of the game despite many players clamoring to do so. The end of Season 8 and the start of Season 9 saw the inclusion of a Shuttle PVP and the conversion of the Federation vs KDF battles into Red vs Blue, many players still refuse to touch it, mostly due to the fact that many of the players who populate it have their ships maxed out for easy killings. This has gotten worse due to a recent patch that put PVP dilithium missions on a 20-hour cooldown.** For awhile, this was the feeling about Crafting as well. Beyond creating the Hargh'peng Torpedoes for the Klingons (despite that, it can be obtained by DOFF missions) and the Aegis space set, there was really no reason TO utilize Crafting. This changed with Season 9.5, but it's immensely YMMV.* UngratefulBastard: Seeing as you started out as a simple cadet/Bekk/farmer and suddenly, within a year, you're now one of the greatest captains in the universe, quite a few characters will gladly talk down to you, especially if they're the type of person who ''worked'' to get where you are.* UnnecessaryCombatRoll: Just watch your Bridge Officers in a ground fight scenario... You can do these too, if you so wish.** Of course, it could well be taken as a homage to [[Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries The Original Series]]. [[NarmCharm Intentional or not.]]** The roll wasn't originally in the game, but enough players requested that the "Kirk Roll" be included.* UnnecessarilyLargeVessel: Nearly every playable Romulan Warbird is enormous and far larger than either their Federation or Klingon counterpart ships, yet their actual combat capability is relatively equal to the other factions' ships.** The Voth take this UpToEleven with their fortress ship, a massive fleet transport 134 kilometers long.* UnwinnableByMistake: Featured Episode "A Step Between Stars". Early in the mission there's a point at which the captain of Tuvok's ship is supposed to get killed by the Voth. If you manage to save him, you break the mission progression.* UnwinnableTrainingSimulation: The PVE match "No-Win Situation" brings the beloved Kobayashi Maru scenario and takes it UpToEleven: five players against an unrelenting horde of foes. Most get to Level 5 before the shuttle is destroyed. Good players can get to level 8 or 9. But, only the best can truly say that they "Don't Believe In A No-Win Situation", to the point where every other player gets a popup across their screen that " doesn't believe in a no-win scenario." (in fact, even getting to 8 or 9 before failing gives every other player a popup across the screen informing them of the fact)* UnwittingPawn:** A savvy player might expect to go up against some clever schemes when going into Romulan territory... [[spoiler:but you probably wouldn't guess just how often your ''own'' people are the ones pulling the gambits on you. First, you are tricked by an Undine posing as an admiral into wrecking the Romulan effort to out Undine infiltrators, and you end up inadvertently enabling the Undine to infiltrate the Romulans and cripple their chances of ever discovering infiltrators; then, immediately afterward, you get sent to intercept a diplomat who seems to be selling secrets to the Romulans. You intercept the dude, manage to catch him, but the Romulans get away with the info... and then you find out that the "diplomat" is a Section 31 agent who fed the Romulans false information, and you were the sucker sent to make the agent look genuine. By the time you find this out, even your normally somewhat passive bridge officers are complaining about how everyone you meet seems to have several agendas at once.]]** Poor Tuvok in "A Step Between Stars"...* UrbanWarfare: The ground phase of "Cutting the Cord" has the player engaging in this; assaulting a Tal Shiar base in a city on Brea IV.* UselessUsefulSpell:** Used to be a straight example, now an aversion. Science Team and Engineering Team are decent heals in isolation, but they shared a {{cooldown}} with Tactical Team, which is so useful that most top builds have ''two'' of it. This shared cooldown was removed in the March 6, 2014 patch.** Anything involving Threat Generation, including the "Attract Fire" cruiser command. Thanks to power creep, putting a tank in a PVE instance just wastes a team slot that could be used for offensive sci or more DPS.* VideoGameCaringPotential: The Tholians have captured federation and Klingon officers on Nukara Prime. Freeing the prisoners from your own alliance can result in them giving you a component needed to shut down the spacial rifts that the Tholians are entering in from (though you can earn these just by killing the Tholians as well.) In fact: the mission associated with freeing the prisoners is called ''[[LampshadeHanging Rescuing Redshirts]]''.* VideoGameCrueltyPotential: The game does in fact track player position and ranged attacks get interrupted by moving behind other objects. "Other objects" that provide cover include ''your own bridge officers or [[RedShirt redshirts]]''.** And then you have some players preferred method of getting rid of Tribbles dominating their inventory: [[spoiler: [[DeathByIrony feeding them]] [[SugarApocalypse into the replicator]], or leaving them in your bank with a [[CarnivoreConfusion Cannibal Tribble]].]]*** And that is even exploited in the game: [[spoiler: one Klingon Duty Officer mission allows you to turn in 10 Tribble Carcasses (what is left of a Tribble after a Cannibal Tribble eats it) for a ridiculous amount of Gold Pressed Latinum. This has led players to leaving tribbles with food in order to breed them to then be eaten by the Cannibal Tribbles. However, there is a chance that your Duty Officer could actually ''end up in the brig if they are accused of breeding tribbles for profit''!!!]]* VillainPedigree: Multiple interviews have stated that the developers want to try and refurbish this for the Borg, after all the [[VillainDecay decay]] they suffered during ''Voyager''; the Borg are intended to be a big, scary endgame threat, and visually and narratively Cryptic is taking steps to make them seem legitimate. It worked, too - most of the uber-powerful endgame weaponry is designed for killing Borg, and [[DemonicSpiders boy, will you need it]].** VillainDecay: But... then they make players fight Borg in the tutorial who don't adapt to weapons and damaged cubes that can be killed by [[RedShirt Miranda light cruisers]]. Justified in that one of the [=NPC=]s you talk to makes it clear there is something wrong with the drones, and the cube is nearly-dead. You can take on full-strength Borg ships very early on though in the Sector Defense Scenes, and it will become clear ''very'' quickly that your Miranda, limited to Lieutenant grade equipment, is no match whatsoever for even a Borg Sphere at that point. Even if by some miracle you and the other ships manage to beat four cubes in the time allowed... [[spoiler: the Borg call in a [[FinalBoss Unimatrix]], which is basically an expy of V'Ger from the first movie.]] At that point, the most useful thing you can do is throw yourself on a Plasma Torpedo so it doesn't hit anyone else.** [[spoiler:[[Series/StarTrekVoyager Species 8472]] is also getting this treatment in a big way after one of the episodes of Voyager similarly de-fanged them (after, ironically enough, introducing them). They're one of the {{BigBad}}s of early Fed content, and are once again committed to their campaign of subterfuge and genocide in the name of paranoid self-preservation, with several tangles with their Tethys dreadnoughts in the early stages of the game... just to drive home the point that you can't hope to beat anything larger than their scoutships without a ''ton'' of help.]]** The game also restores the pedigree of the ''Klingons'', as well; one of the first things you encounter them doing once the "real" game starts? ''Engaging in the full-blown'' '''''sacking''''' ''of a starbase.'' And [[FromBadToWorse it only gets worse]], evidently.*** On the other hand, you kill more Klingons yourself in that mission than Kirk did in his entire career. That can't be good for their {{Badass}} reputation.*** One of the early story arcs for Klingon players is a full-scale strike on a Federation shipyard orbiting Mars...the planet ''right next to the one housing Starfleet Headquarters.'' The very next arc sees you and four guys invading Gre'thor, a.k.a ''KLINGON HELL,'' just so you can get a crack at killing Fek'lhr, a.k.a. ''KLINGON SATAN,'' for so much as ''looking'' at Klingon space with intent to invade it. If you need any further proof of the Klingons' BadAss credentials...* VillainousBreakdown: [[spoiler: Thot Trel has one once he finds out that the Precursor archive that's he's gone through hell and back to get into is only a library and some Precursors in cryogenic sleep, not the mighty armory of incredibly powerful weapons he thought would be there.]]** Also [[spoiler: Karukan in "Facility 4028", when the Female Changeling blames him for failing to arrive in the Alpha Quadrant in time to win the war. May be justified, considering it wasn't his fault at all.]]* ViolenceIsTheOnlyOption:** The game has been accused of making TheFederation into [[TheEmpire the Klingon Empire]]. This is despite the fact that the Federation is currently fighting a major war on several fronts, [[spoiler: and has been infiltrated by the Undine.]] That said, the fairly linear nature of the missions can result in a few instances where it seems like you don't act like too much of a Starfleet officer; see the UnwittingPawn and YouCantThwartStageOne examples below.** For a more specific example, the patrol mission in the Acamar system has you attempting to mediate a dispute between two Acamarian clans. Screw up the negotiations and they attack you. Talk the two sides down, and the Tal Shiar agents whose covert manipulation started the dispute warp in and attack you.* VirtualPaperDoll: Aye, yi, yi! The customization on this thing is ''amazing''. Various costumes throughout ''Star Trek'''s 40 years, different starship models, the works. Sadly, it's not as expansive as ''VideoGame/ChampionsOnline'', as [[ExecutiveMeddling CBS doesn't want things to be altered too much]]. For example, players used to be able to alter the color of their energy weaponry at one time.* WaistcoatOfStyle: In keeping with the Republic's retro-futuristic aesthetic, Romulan characters have access to a wide variety of fancy waistcoats and waistcoat-like garments.* WarMemorial: Players can travel to the battle memorial of Wolf-359. Found in the center of all the wreckage still floating in space is a giant holographic Starfleet symbol emitting from a projector on the monument. As you approach closer to memorial, you hear the ghostly comm chatter from the battle. Over in Romulan space, a holographic memorial is placed for the billions of Romulans who died when Romulus itself was destroyed by the Hobus supernova.* WaveMotionGun: The ''Galaxy''-class dreadnought has the phaser spinal lance, but the biggest wave motion gun in the game likely belongs to the Romulan ''Scimitar''-class warbirds, which can open their wing foils and fire off a massive area-effect thalaron attack capable of vaping weak ships in a second. And they can do it [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard mere seconds after decloaking.]] The Multi-Mission Reconnaissance Explorer ship has a weapon called the Quantum Field Focus Phaser, which turns your deflector dish into a high-powered phaser gun. The M.A.C.O. Space set and the Klingon counterpart, Adapted Honor Guard space set, gives you the Heavy Graviton Beam, which does the same thing, except it's a high powered shot more dealing with smashing through shieldless facings.** Player ships can of course use the Beam Overload, Torpedo: High Yield and Cannon: Rapid Fire skills, which do ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin.* WeaponizedExhaust: the Eject Warp Plasma ability.* WhamEpisode: ''Sphere Of Influence''. Players came in expecting to be taken to the Dyson's Sphere of Season 8. [[spoiler: Instead they end up in the Iconian Gateway Control Center and learn about their plans, which include A) watching every major race in the galaxy, intent on enslaving or exterminating everyone; B) there are over ''10,000'' gateways hidden in subspace; and C) their reach extends beyond the Milky Way Galaxy, for now including ''Andromeda and the Kelvans.'']]** Then it gets worse: The entire ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' Dominion War [[spoiler:was an attempt to get the Alpha & Beta Quadrants to fight the Iconians.]] ** And then at the end, [[spoiler:'''all''' of the gateways are unlocked, [[SpannerInTheWorks and it's a lucky break at best]]. They will be coming. The Dyson Sphere was merely a side effect of this one mission.]]** The cutscene from the Dyson Sphere Reputation Tier I completion, which reveals that [[spoiler: the Obelisk Carrier was given to us from a Voth who got sick and tired of the Voth's insistence that they were first and warns the Federation, Klingon and Romulan groups that the Iconians ''may be on board the Sphere''.]]** ''Surface Tension'': [[spoiler:The Federation/Klingon War is over, but we've pissed someone off -- an ''Iconian'', who shows up and kills the Klingon High Council in one fell swoop.]]** "Uneasy Allies": [[spoiler:Sela leads us to a third, much older Dyson Sphere in the Andromeda Galaxy... suddenly ''millions'' of Iconian ships (aligned or otherwise) appear out of nowhere, [[OhCrap blotting out the light from the Sphere's star]]. ''Then it jumps directly to Iconia, within striking range of the Alpha and Beta Quadrants...'']]* WhamLine: Also from Sphere of Influence. Members from the Federation, Klingon Empire and Romulan Republic are trying to decide the fate of [[spoiler:an Iconian gateway]] when...-->'''Commander Winters''': Enterprise to Captain Shon. Sir, we've been scanning the gateway\\'''Captain Shon''': What did you find?\\'''Commander Winters''': The terminus is at a fixed point now. We could determine that. But... [[spoiler:I don't know what we picked up, but the monitors on the bridge [[OhCrap are all showing an Omega, we're locked out of the computer and the engines are off-line.]]]] We... we need you back on the ''Enterprise'', sir.\\'''Captain Shon''': I see. This changes things significantly.** From "Uneasy Allies":--> [[spoiler:'''Iconian:'''' I SEE YOU.]]* WhatTheHellHero:** The Feds and Klingons in "A Step Between Stars" have this reaction when Tiaru Jarok all but plants the Romulan flag on the Jenolan Dyson sphere, inciting an argument that nearly brings the alliance crashing down around them. The Feds cite the sphere's discovery by the USS ''Jenolan'' and mapping by the ''Enterprise''-D as proof of a prior Federation claim, the Klingons don't want to be excluded from controlling something as powerful as a Dyson sphere, and the Romulans claim the gateways leading to both spheres as their property. (Incorrectly, even, due to a [[PlotHole factual mistake]] by Cryptic: the gateway leading to the Delta Quadrant is located in the Jouret system, canonically a Federation territorial possession.)** In "Revelations" the Turei give one to Seven of Nine and Tuvok for awakening the Vaadwaur in [[Series/StarTrekVoyager VOY]]: "[[Recap/StarTrekVoyagerS6E7DragonsTeeth Dragon's Teeth]]".* WhatYouAreInTheDark: One for the player in "Operation Gamma". [[spoiler: A Ferengi agrees to help you contact the Dominion in exchange for help in a salvaging operation, but once you complete the task, she ''very deliberately'' agitates the local cosmozoan life forms and warps out, leaving you to fight for your life in a little shuttle against swarms of the enraged creatures. When you catch up to her, she's run into the Dominion, who have disabled her ship and are about to destroy her in punishment for conducting illegal activities in their space. In exchange for the Dominion's help, they ask you to carry out the sentence against the Ferengi. You can either destroy her, or let her go back through the wormhole. The only people who will know are your loyal crew on your little shuttle, and the Dominion, who will see it as simply a legal matter being settled as it should be. You have to make a choice...]]** Similarly, after defeating Hassan the Undying's dreadnought over Nimbus III, the player has the choice whether to take Hassan prisoner or kill him, and the only witnesses to your decision are your bridge crew and a bunch of pirates, neither of which would bat an eye should he happen to meet an unfortunate end...* WholePlotReference: The last two Breen Featured Episodes to [[Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration The Next Generation]] episode "The Chase".** The Third Anniversary mission "Temporal Ambassador" refers to another [[Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration The Next Generation]] episode, "Yesterday's Enterprise".* TheWorfBarrage: As a player, facing down stronger opponents like the Jem'Hadar Dreadnought Carrier, the Voth Bulwark Dreadnought Carrier or Borg ships bigger than a sphere will make your attacks seem ineffective. This is why many players absolutely hate [=AFKers=] in PVE matches, as they need every bit of help and that one person is just sitting off at the edge, refusing to participate and just wanting their prizes.* TheWorfEffect:** For the game's two-year anniversary, Cryptic included the launch of the brand-new ''Odyssey''-class cruisers, including the ''Enterprise-F''. Eight months later and the ''Odyssey''-class USS ''Houston'' shows up in the Special Task Force mission "Hive Onslaught", for the sole purpose of getting [[OneHitKill one-shotted]] by the weapons of the Borg Unimatrix ships. To make this example truly complete, the ''Houston'' is under the command of Worf's grandson, Admiral D'Vak.** You, as the player, can invoke this when dealing with powerful opponents like the Borg. You might have the best ship in the fleet and armed with the best weapons money can buy, but a foe like the Borg will take it like a champ and hit you something fierce.** And then there's the Tholians. The daily mission "Tholian Red Alert" has you respond to a Borg invasion prompt, only to arrive in the Azure Nebula to find that a Tholian armada got there first and wiped the floor with them.** Voth ''Citadel''-class dreadnoughts usually take a whole team of player characters to defeat because of their [[MightyGlacier sheer durability]]. The Vaadwaur are introduced in "Revelations" by blasting one out of the sky, [[InferredHolocaust causing debris to rain down on the Turei homeworld]].* XanatosGambit: "Sphere of Influence" reveals that [[spoiler:a lot of what's happened even before ''Film/StarTrek'' was the Iconians' fault, planting agents all over the place to set things in their favor so they can take over all four Quadrants and restore Iconia. Only certain SpannerInTheWorks moments from players prevent them from actually achieving their goal.]] It was almost as if [[WesternAnimation/{{Gargoyles}} David Xanatos]] gave a few pointers!* YouAllLookFamiliar: Most of the NPC's you see during ground missions or when visiting starships or space stations will pretty much be clones of each other, which is amusing given how adamantly cloning is abhorred in the storylines it comes up in.* YouAreTooLate: [[spoiler:Implied in Season 8's rep system. At Tier 1 a Voth Scientist sneaks a comm to the Joint Task force. The message? The Iconians are in the sphere NOW. This is even more implied during one of the Ion Storm attacks as Iconian Probes will strike out at you.]]* YouCantThwartStageOne: Despite the ''numerous'' hints as "Divide et Impera" goes on that something is terribly wrong, you cannot out [[spoiler:the Undine masquerading as Admiral Zelle early and you'll end up helping it infiltrate the Romulans no matter what you do.]]** This one is ''especially'' grating for some people, as one of [[Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration TNG's best episodes]] had the message of "the first duty of a Starfleet officer is to the truth." [[spoiler:Yeah, that's great, so could the game please let us pursue the truth ''before'' we have to slaughter dozens (more like hundreds, considering that those warbirds you scrap in orbit don't launch any escape craft) of innocent Romulans?]]*** This mission seems to be intentionally this as it marks a change in what the player's options are and how they are treated by [=NPC=]s. Section 31 basically uses an Undine infiltrator simulation to recruit them and when the same situation arises in Terradome, the PC tells [[spoiler: Undine!Sulu]] to piss off and goes in anyways to fix it. The player even brings up the situation with Zelle later on in the Romulan arc during "The Vault". It seems it was more intended to be MyGreatestFailure for the player. Christine Thompson (STO's head writer) revealed that it was supposed to be the first part of a three part series... that never came to fruition. And ''Cryptic'' hates that it never got finished. Fortunately the Foundry community stepped in and wrote at least two sequels, including [[Recap/StarTrekOnlineFoundryDivideUtRegnes "Divide ut Regnes"]] which uses TimeTravel and [[spoiler:Undine PsychicPowers]] to explain both the railroading and why [[spoiler:Zelle]] continues to stand motionless in T'nae's office after "Divide et Impera".* YouSoundFamiliar:** Creator/JonStJohn voices both Chancellor J'mpok and Ambassador B'vat. ''Delta Rising'' adds Commander Ethan Burgess from Starfleet Intelligence.** Creator/MarcBiagi voices K'valk and Alexander Rozhenko.** Funny one: Creator/DaveRivas voices Va'Kel Shon and Hakeev. That's right, the only CompleteMonster in ''STO'' has the same voice as the captain of the ''Enterprise''. Rivas also plays Eric Cooper [[spoiler:and his Undine replacement]].** Creator/DeniseCrosby reprises both roles she played in Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration: Natasha Yar and Sela.** Creator/LaniMinella plays a ''lot'' of roles throughout the game, including a number of Romulan military officers both Imperial and Republican. Early ones include Admiral T'nae and, following Creator/MajelBarrett's death, the Federation ComputerVoice. She's actually earned a number of compliments for the last one, as she gets ''very'' close to Mrs. Barrett in tone and delivery.* YoungAndInCharge: You in the Fed Storyline as every single officer on your ship got killed except for you.** The new Klingon storyline does this by way of (natch) KlingonPromotion, and the Romulan storyline does it by way of the player character and their friend "borrowing" a light warbird during the [[spoiler: the escape from their DoomedHometown]].* ZergRush: Very much the case for some of the Borg-based Special Task Forces. Yes, there ''are'' a lot of Borg. Yes, they ''are'' in every room. Yes, they ''will'' all jump you unless you manage your aggro very carefully. And yes, they ''do'' [[GoddamnedBats spawn more]] and they ''do'' adapt to energy weapon attacks.** The Borg were bad, but Season 6 brought the Tholians. On Nukara (in the outside portions) there are so many Tholian Ensigns with ridiculous (10 second) respawn timers with super advanced detection AI (they can see you THROUGH WALLS) and will chase players across the map until they beam to a new location. While do a degree this fits canon (the Tholians are notorious xenophobes), it adds a degree of difficulty for doing the exterior missions solo (though any science officer with healing abilities will be practically unphased). The Interior missions are a little bit easier to manage when fighting the Tholians, but take longer to complete due to the size and layout of the maps.* ZettaiRyouiki: The TOS uniforms for the ladies are rocking some serious grade B goodness if you go with the skirt and thigh-high boots. Grades C and D are also represented.[[/folder]]----